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D STATES OF AMERICA. 





THREE JOURNEYS 



Around the World 



Travels in the Pacific Islands, New Zealand 
Australia, Ceylon, India, Egypt 



AND OTHER 



oriental countries 



IN O.VE VOLUME 



J 



J. M. PEEBLES, A.M., M.D., PH.D. 

Author of "Seers of the Ages," " Immortality," " How to Live a Century," " Criti. 

cal Review of Rev. Dr. Kipp," "Jesus, Myth, Man or God?" "The Soul, 

its Pre-existbnce, " 'Did Jesus Christ Exist?" Etc., Etc. 



" World-weary pilgrims, comfortless — forlorn ? 

Up! Let us hence depart. 
'Tis morning now. No longer let us stay 
Where hope will wither, love and li^e decay: 

Bright is the world to-day ! 
Let us on — on then and compass it." 



BOSTON 

BANNER OF LIGHT PUBLISHING CO. 

9 Bosworth Street 



L- 



TWC ED 




(JffO 



2Vdi 



Copyright, 1897 
By J. M. Peebles 



PREFACE. 



What I saw in the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Cey- 
lon, India, Arabia and other Oriental Countries expresses in a few 
words the distinctive characteristics of this volume. It abounds in 
such facts about the people of far-away lands as all Americans and 
English-speaking citizens ought to know. 

Owing to extensive travels and a well-trained eye, we were able to 
see phases of life, national characteristics and religious rites and cere- 
monies, especially among Brahmins, Buddhists and Parsees, usually 
denied the hasty traveler ; these we propose to share with our 
readers. 

The author has endeavored to describe what came under his per- 
sonal observation in these so-called heathen lands with fairness and a 
true moral independence. Who and where are the heathen ? are 
serious questions. Ceylon and India are both sending missionaries 
to America. 

In this volume appear portions of my book on travels published 
nearly a quarter of a century since ; and for the reason that truths 
never perish, and Oriental nations change slowly. 

The natural tendency of travel is to give breadth to thought and a 
fresh impetus to the humanitarian sentiments of the soul. 

"Over space the clear banner of mind is unfurled, 
And the habits of God are the laws of the world." 






THE PRELUDE. 



" Pilgrim footsteps, whither hound 1 
Pilgrim glances, whither bent ? 

Sandal-shod and travel-gowned , 
Lo, I seek the way they went." 

Life is a divine gift — a pilgrimage with failures and victories — 
perils by sea and perils by land. 

Travel is an educator, giving breadth to thought, depth to re- 
search, freedom to philosophy, strength to religion and a fresh, fiery 
impetus to the best humanitarian sentiments of the soul. 

Seeing, in connection with consciousness, reason and the highest 
judgment, is knowing ; and knowledge is the stepping-stone that 
leads up to the temple of wisdom. 

STILL ON THE ROAD. 

Since traveling and seeing are rungs in the ladder by which we 
climb, why not see the world we live in, traversing all lands, sailing 
o'er all seas, exploring all templed caves -and studying all archaic 
ruins to further lift the veil from Isis ? Why not sink cables in all 
oceans and plant magnetic chain-links the world around ? Are we 
not brothers all ? The world has two classes : not the sheep and the 
goats of the parable, but the daring do-somethings, and those that do 
nothing except to eat, drink, doze, dream, read novels, paint the im- 
possible and grumble that things were not done some other way. It 
tires the worker to drag such laggards along. 

"Better see the wonders of the world abroad 
Than, living dully sluggardized at home, 
"Wear out the soul in gruesome idleness." 



CHAPTER I. 

HOME LIFE IN CALIFORNIA. 

" Of the beginning that never began is life's tale, 
And that never-finishing ending to which we all sail — 
For the children of never and ever we are, 
And our home is beyond, and our goal is afar." 

Circumnavigating the globe several times is little more 
than a matter of well-directed purpose and energy . The iron 
will never hesitates. It delights to dare and to do. A firm 
rational individuality is commendable. Every man of genius 
has a way of his own. Let him have it. Help the world's 
helpers, or stand aside, pout, and be forgotten. 

Countries, like individuals, have their aural emanations — 
their idiosyncracies. There is more soul-freedom and less 
conventional restraint west than east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. The climate uniform and bracing, thought free, the 
intellect clear, liberalism fruits out spontaneously in Califor- 
nia. Southern California is the Italy of America. Residing 
anywhere in the stirring, pulsing West broadens the vision, 
expands the emotional nature and inspires a most generous 
and fraternal toleration. 

The Orient with its treasures and the Occident with its 
untold energies met upon the Pacific coast, and in its agone 
years cities, cosmopolitan in character, sprung up as if by 
some sorcerer's art. Old heads guided the feet that trod 
these cities. Vigor, vigilance and public spiritedness consti- 



2 AROUND THE WORLD. 

tuted the red globules that flowed in the body politic. And 
to-day California is one of the grandest States in the Ameri- 
can Union. 

CALIFORNIA SCENERY. 

Switzerland, with its mountain chains and towering Alps, 
pales before the rich magnificent scenery of the Pacific States. 
The mountain peaks are weird, grand, defiant ; while the ad- 
joining plateaus are covered with grass, sage-brush and pines. 
The air is light, pure and bracing. On the hilltops, in the 
northern part of the State, white fleecy snow may sometimes 
be seen ; but in San Diego, where I reside, there is neither 
snow nor ice nor frost, and, withal, it is the sunniest and most 
equable climate in the world. 

FRUITS AND VINES. 

Piled-up tons of melons, peaches, pears, figs, apricots and 
semi-tropical fruits literally blockade the wharves and front 
streets of the California cities during the autumn and winter 
seasons. Though oranges, lemons and pineapples grow lux- 
uriantly and ripen in any yard and garden, only sixty miles 
away up on the highlands at Julian very choice apples are 
grown. 

Passing up and down the coast railways, walnut-groves and 
apricot-orchards literally reel under their fruitage, while vine- 
yards everywhere shook their purple clusters. Swiftly whirl- 
ing by lemon and orange plantations, loaded and golden, they 
weave and sway like waving forests. Delicious things for the 
palate, beauty for the eye, lands for the toiler, minerals for 
the miner, health for the invalid, wealth for the industrious, 
books for the student, friends for the worthy, and religious 
toleration for all regardless of ancestral clime or color — these 
are among the charms of the sunset States. 

Life and activity flame everywhere. The universe is God's 
habitation ; this earth, one of the smaller apartments ! enter- 



HOME LIFE IN CALIFORNIA. 6 

ing it some seventy-six years ago, I found it already fur- 
nished. What a carpet ! — the emerald grass. What a ceil- 
ing ! — the frescoed sky. What tapestried pillars ! — the 
granite rocks. What a front ! — the flaming sunrise. What 
a rear-door ! — the sunset, through which the day goes down 
into shadow-lands. What a chandelier ! — the sun and fiery 
stars. What fields for future explorations ! — the interstellar 
spaces of infinity. Surely, God is infinitely great and good. 

REQUIRED IMPROVEMENTS. 

Arise, O land of the west winds — cities encircled with the 
lemon, the orange and the pomegranate — and deck your- 
selves in more beautiful garments ! Your gardens and your 
highways even, so far away from the snows of the north 
land, might be made to bloom like the rose. 

A house devoid of shade-trees and flowers reminds one of 
a salesroom for caskets, with an accompanying perpetual 
funeral. What opportunities we have in California for land- 
scape artists ! Transformations and suburban decorations pay 
even property-holders. If there's a praiseworthy mania, it is 
the laying out of beautiful gardens, noble avenues, and mam- 
moth parks. Inspired we feel to preach a sermon to the citi- 
zens of California upon the importance of putting shade-trees 
around their houses, and books into them. Home presup- 
poses a library, a cabinet, a conservatory, an orchard, and a 
grove with weird, winding paths for walking and meditation. 

" Who loves a library, still his Eden keeps ; 
Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps." 

How easily the interior towns of this thrifty State might 
be made to rival the villages in the Atlantic States, by put- 
ting out ornamental shrubbery ! In a hot, dusty summer's 
day, what is more inviting than the cooling shadows of grace- 
ful evergreens, or the serried lines of maples and elms that 
interlace and arch public highways? And then, why not 



4 AROUND THE WORLD. 

plant fruit-trees all along the wayside ? Why not have the 
gardens of the Hesperides in our midst to-day? Why not 
have a heaven on earth, with the divine will fully done ? 
When half-dreaming of heaven, with its homes of love, 
dreaming of the spirit-gardens that hang and float in ether 
spaces above us, our brain throbs and brims in ecstasy. Let 
us, then, make real to-day our divinest ideals. 



CHAPTER II. 

MY THIRD VOYAGE. 

" I cannot rest from Travel : I will drink 
Life to its lees." — Tennysox. 

It was on September the 11th, 1872, that I embarked, 
under an Australian engagement, npon the steamer " Idaho " 
for a voyage around the world, not alone to see, but to teach 
as I traveled. 

Five years later I again girdled the globe, via Australia, 
India, Madagascar, Natal and South Africa, teaching and 
lecturing as I went upon the great moral reform subjects of 
the age. 

And again moved by the missionary spirit, I sailed from 
San Francisco for a third voj^age around the world Dec. 5, 
1896. Friends, relatives pleaded with me not to undertake 
such a perilous journey at my age. Age ! I spurned the 
thought. The soul knows nothing of age. The eternal years 
past and future are hers. The clay, the shell, the house that 
the man lives in is not the man himself. I am rollicking, 
glorying in the gorgeous morning of abiding youth. 

True, there is a momentary sadness in the parting good- 
byes: 

" But this I've seen, and many a pang 
Has pressed it on my mind, — 
The one who goes is happier 

Than those he leaves behind. 
God wills it so, and so it is : 
The pilgrim on his way. 



ABOUND THE WORLD. 

Though weak and worn, more cheerful is 

Then all the rest who stay. 
And when, at last, poor man, subdued, 

Lies down, to death resigned, 
May he not still be happier far 

Than those he leaves behind 1 " 



The past conspired to mold the present. It was the yester- 
days that fashioned the to-days. Let us not too rudely crush 
the rock from whence we were hewn. The old moon is not 
lost though invisible. It is the invisible helpers that often 
help the ideal to become the real, and faith to become fruition. 

The universe is infinite. The wisest have not so much as 
entered the portal of her temple. The atom no eye hath 
seen. On — onward, then, oh my soul, like the sandal- 
footed Solon of Grecian memory ! Why not travel ? Why 
not lift old manuscripts from their moldy recesses? Why 
not find and read the historic stories of half- forgotten ages ? 
Why not - unearth the once proud Nippurs that were gray 
with antiquity when ancient Babylon was in her earliest 
mornings of prosperity? 

Courageous energy with rich linguistic culture behind 
the spade, pushing aside the babyish biblical chronology of 
Archbishop Usher — has revealed a very polished civilization 
existing several thousands of years B. C, in the valleys of 
the Tigris and the Euphrates. 

Diving deeper, and going still farther in the line of the 
Babylonian excavation down to the deeply-buried Assyrian 
city, Nippur, authentic inscriptions — authentic history 
written upon bricks, cylinders, tablets and vases, push the 
existence of a grand civilization back on Time's dial to 7000 
years B. C. And there must have been millenniums of 
preceding years to have coined such a mighty civilization. 
Wisely, Lord Kelvin, recently at the annual meeting of the 
Victoria Institute, London, of which I have the honor of 
being a member, said : " The earth could not have been a 
habitable globe for more than 30,000,000 of years." 



MY THIRD VOYAGE. 7 

Sailing, gazing on the blue depths below and now on the 
bright skies above, I further philosophize. If the universe 
is one, as Monism affirms, infilled and governed by infinite 
spirit-causation — if matter is the vestured clothing of this 
causation — if the spiritual is the one great reality, and all 
else is illusion, as- the higher philosophy teaches, then Spirit- 
ualism is the one true religion — the wisdom religion of the 
aq-es. 

Spirit, whether incarnate or discarnate, responds to spirit by 
the law of vibration as music responds to music. Life is 
everywhere. Consciousness and love are universal ; and 
accordingly all nations, races, tribes necessarily sympathize. 
There's but one pulse-beat, one heart-throb in the universe. 
My birds, trees, flowers know me — know and love me. . . . 

December 9th. — Four days out on the tremulous ocean. 
Our steamer, though the waters are rough, wriggles along like 
a revolving auger. Our crew, a nautical commonwealth, is 
getting social. Games are instituted for the day and a 
programme for evening literary exercises. 

December VLth. — How calm the sea is to-day! What a 
relief. No calls, no correspondence to answer, no diseases to 
diagnose ! What a quiet life, reading by day, and gazing at 
the glittering stars by night — those shining altar-lamps set 
in the heavens by the finger of the Eternal ! A sudden 
change this evening, — rough and rolling, the ocean ! Would 
you escape seasickness, diet ; walk the deck in defiance of 
dashing waves. Exercise a plucky will-power — no compro- 
mise. Grace aside, it is grit that leads to glory on the ocean. 

Up higher in thought for a moment ! Afloat on the ocean 
of boundless being, uncontrollable circumstances affect us, 
unseen powers influence us. None of us are wholly our own. 
We did not choose our birth-land, its locality, or climate ; 
neither did we select the time of coming into this objective 
existence ; nor the government under which we would live, 
nor the color of the skin that should cover us. And yet, 
dee'per, diviner — regardless of circumstance, clime or color, 



8 AROUND THE WORLD. 

humanity senses, weeps the same tears over human suffering. 
India's late famine was in a measure America's famine ; and 
so she sent to the far-off Orient her cargoes of wheat. 
Humanity, be it to the utmost limits of East or West, has one 
common heart centre, one common aspiration for immortality, 
one common desire for angel ministries, one God, one law, 
one origin, one brotherhood, and one grand destiny, ultimately 
awaiting all human intelligences — such is the interpretation 
of the vision. 

As polished mirrors reflect and reveal; so seers ancl 
mystics, standing upon the mountains of the beautiful, 
wrapped in the seamless mantles of prophecy, reflect and 
largely outline the future. Neither God nor his prophets 
are dead. There are prophets of to-day of which the world 
is not worthy. The worldly proud, the mole-eyed miser can- 
not see them ; the deaf plutocrat cannot hear their voices ; 
and our millionaires, dumb save to talking of dollars and 
dimes, never deign to sing their praises. Those selfish, en- 
crusted money-makers, such as Jay Gould, Astor, Vanderbilt, 
Crocker and that morally gangrened gang of Wall-Street 
gamblers long ago dug their own graves — graves over which 
willows refuse to weep, or respectable owls to hoot. Pity 
and pass on, oh, fellow mortals. 

A scroll is unrolling, a prophecy fulfilling. Thrice or 
more said the oracle was he to magnetically enzone the world 
— thrice or more was he to sow the seeds of spiritual truth 
in all lands and under all skies. What shall the harvest be ? 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 

" My spirit to yours dear brother, 
Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you, 
I do not sound your name, but I understand you, 
I specify you with joy my comrade to salute you, and to salute those who 

are with you, before and since, and those to come also, 
That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession, 
We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times, 
We, enclosers of all continents, all castles, allowers of all theologies, 
Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men, 
We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers 

nor anything that is asserted, 
We hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions, jealousies, 

recriminations on every side, 
They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade, 
Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till 

we make our ineffable mark upon time and the diverse eras. 
Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to 

come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are." — Walt Whitman. 

It was good to know the good gray poet, nature's seer. 
It was in Washington, D. C, that I first met him, being the 
bearer of a friendly note to him from Emerson, whom I had 
just visited in his Concord home. At this time Whitman 
was a Government employee, yet a poet by nature and a 
practical interpreter of the ideal as revealed in nature. In 
later years I frequently met him in his pamphlet-pressed, 
book-crowded study room in Camden, N. J., a very Mecca for 
his literary admirers. 

A class of cheap critics pronounced his " Leaves of Grass " 
immoral. They were immoral, perhaps, to the immoral — im- 
moral to the prude and the crone. Men and women gener- 
ally, find what they hunt for. They see in others what is 



10 AROUND THE WORLD. 

most active and seething in themselves. There are those 
altogether too pure and sweet to attend properly and 
promptly to the demands of nature, medically speaking. 
Such die early — die from the transgression of law. Nat- 
ure is God's divine garment — and glittering with sunshine 
and gold and silver and crystal, and tropical foliage, is unsul- 
lied only when contaminated and misdirected by human pas- 
sions. The good, the cleanly, have no need to personally 
prate of their cleanliness. Never lived there a cleaner, purer- 
minded man than Whitman, the peer of Whittier, Holmes and 
other distinguished American poets. . . . 

But let us on with our travels. It is December, 1896. Our 
outward-bound steamer is the "Alameda." "All aboard!" 
shouted the gruffy Dutch captain. The editor of the Philo- 
sophical Journal and other friends accompany me to the 
steamer, tendering fraternal hand-shakes and good-wishes as 
heartfelt send-offs. It is well to have many acquaintances — 
and but few friends. Unselfish friendship is immortal — pure 
love undying. 

Three days of ocean calm ! Most of the passengers have 
now settled down into little sympathetic knots : smokers and 
gamblers in the smoke-room, topers in the bar-room; the 
thinking and the cultured to the music saloon, or the library, 
which, I am sorry to say, is constituted mostly of novels and 
old antiquated volumes, dry as a Calvinistic sermon of the 
seventeenth century. 

Five days on the way and stormy. The steamer is crowded. 
Several are seasick, and thinking temporarily that life is not 
worth living. Living and existing are utterly unlike. The 
stupid oyster exists, men and angels live. I am never lonely 
when alone : the thronging multitude makes me lonesome. 

We may touch people mechanically; but if there's no 
soul fellowship, there will be an impregnable, impassable gulf 
between us. We cannot go to them. They cannot as they 
are come to us. There's no vibrating chain of sympathy 
between us. They have no balm that heals, no soft, sunny 



SANDWICH ISLANDS. 11 

aura that soothes. Have you not been hand-touched when 
you felt no thrill of ecstasy? No rivulets of life leaping 
down from the ever-green mountains of the soul ? The 
nearest in body may be the farthest off in soul. One may 
live in a palace gilded with gold and ivory and mother-of- 
pearl, and yet be in a social and spiritual dungeon amid the 
napping of leprous wings. There are men occupying struct- 
ures plain to severity, free from frescoes and exquisite carv- 
ings, and yet, spiritually, they are living in Alhambra pal- 
aces and banqueting with the gods of science and literature. 
There are flowers so sensitive to the approaching signs and 
sounds of storm that they close their petals ; so there are 
mortals that close their delicate natures to the tread and 
touch of the rough and the selfishly depraved. They are 
called unsocial. This is injustice. They simply occupy a 
gentler, higher plane of life attainable by all. As musical 
notes respond to music in the same key, so these souls, afire 
with love, respond to the touch of the pure in heart — to the 
thoughts of the good, the beautiful and the true everywhere. 

SENATOR STANFORD AND PRESIDENT LINCOLN, SPIRIT- 
UALISTS. 

Comfortably settled in my cabin and well on the way to 
Honolulu and Apia, I renewed acquaintance with Mr. Clark, 
the chief steward, born in Vermont near my own birth-place. 

The chief stewardess, Mrs. Graham, a woman of great 
energy, of culture and of English birth, is exceedingly well 
liked for her good qualities and many personal kindnesses to 
the ladies. She was a personal friend of Ex-Governor and 
Senator Stanford. These Stanfords, eminent and very excel- 
lent people, moving in what is denominated the highest cir- 
cles of American social life, were avowed Spiritualists. 
Often did Mrs. Graham meet them at Mr. Slater's seances. 
Conversing of Spiritualism, she remarked to me — "I have 
heard the Stanfords say more than once, ' Had it not have 
been for our son's passing into spirit life and the messages 



12 AROUND THE WORLD. 

from kirn and from other spirits, the Palo Alto University, 
called the Stanford University, would not have been built.' ' : 

It was Spiritualism, too, that inspired Abraham Lincoln 
to issue that magnificent proclamation of emancipation that 
struck the chains from the limbs of four millions of slaves. 

Often when in Washington, D. C, many years ago, did I 
attend seances at the residence of the Lauries, where Presi- 
dent Lincoln, listening to teachings and trance utterances 
from the fathers of our Republic, through the inspired lips 
of Nettie Colburn, became so fired with justice and the spirit 
of freedom that the strokes of his pen broke the shackles of 
millions, and made of slaves, that were being bought and sold, 
men, with the inalienable right to " life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness." 

SOUL DREAMS AND HOPES. 

Half-dreaming, pondering, let us philosophize. Conscious 
of a conscious existence, I fancy myself a sort of a moral 
equation. Consciousness and aspiration are the algebraic 
equals ; and eternity is the unknown quantity. Laws are 
not creative, but methods, — Deific methods of procedure. 
Mathematical laws are universal. Every atom, every parti- 
cle of iron circulating in my body, follows the law of its 
strongest attraction, — follows it mathematically. Results 
are true to their producing causes. Moral equations, because 
relating to moral actions and to the moral possibilities of the 
soul, admit of self-solution only. Personally, I am the prob- 
lem ; and I, too, must solve myself. 

As between nations, arbitration is the great word. The 
genius of this intellectual age requires the abolition of wars, 
of the crimson flag and cannon ; of school-boy whip and a 
personal devil — aye, more, the gradual yet almost com- 
plete reconstruction of jurisprudence, theology and govern- 
ments. Politicians ! We've had enough of them. Oh, for 
the coming man, for the constructor ! Oh, for self-denial 
and moral heroism ! Why cringe and cower ? Why toddle 
like babes, and lean like half-dipped candles ? Cautiously 



SANDWICH ISLANDS. 13 

inquiring for the winning. Alone, — alone with the truth, 
is a majority ! 

WHEN DOES THE SOUL BEGIN TO EXIST? 

" I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven," ex- 
claimed the Revelator John. The harmonial philosophy- 
recognizes this open door, — those golden gates ajar. 

Sitting with a distinguished medium, he was immediately- 
entranced, and the conversation turning upon pre-existence, 
the controlling spirit said, that, " While making no preten- 
sions to infallibility, still I must say that I consider the 
theory of ' re-incarnation,' that is, the re-incarnating of resur- 
rected and immortalized souls back into the uterine receptacle, 
into childhood with no memory of a past life in mortal form, 
and on up into gross earthly bodies with embittering experi- 
ences, as neither necessary in the divine economy nor correct 
in fact. Over two hundred years have I traversed the regions 
that you call spirit and I have no desire for a re-conception 
or a re-birth into mortality. I have heard fraternal spirit 
intelligences teach this theoiy, but have never witnessed a 
practical illustration of it. If necessary there will doubtless 
be facilities provided to produce the result. But the soul's 
eternal pre-existence is to me true — an intuitive truth of 
my inmost being. It is no more true that a this implies a 
that than that a beginning implies an ending." 

WHAT IS THE SOUL, SPLRIT KNIGHT? 

This spirit replied : " The soul is a potentialized portion 
of God, the divine principle — the spirit esse, the keystone 
that crowns man with a fadeless immortality. This original 
soul, commencing to accrete spiritual substance and physical 
matter, takes the human form germinally from the sacred 
moment of embryonic conception." . . . 

" Our astronomers," said I to Parisi, an Italian spirit, 
" pronounce the moon uninhabited, having no atmosphere." 

It matters little to me what your astronomers in their 



14 AROUND THE WORLD. 

earthly blindness, may or may not say. There is an atmos- 
phere pertaining to your earth, to the moon, to the planets, 
to every orb, every object, and entity in nature. The most 
refined atmosphere relating to any star in the range of your 
telescopic system is one of the Pleiades, third of the series. 
There are other planets in interstellar realms far in advance 
of this, however. Earthly astronomers know nothing of 
them ; nor very little, as yet, of their neighbor the moon, 
with its atmospheric strata, and swarming inhabitants. The 
science of astronomy among mortals is yet in its swaddling- 
clothes. They should talk with becoming modesty. . . . 

" Most certainly. There are old Oriental cities, precious 
stones, treasures and statuary, buried in deltas, and imbedded 
under mountains of sands. These, by the aid of clairvoyance, 
and the citizens of the heavens who lived in remote an- 
tiquity, might and will be unearthed when mortals become 
unselfish enough to wisely appropriate such immense treas- 
ures." 

Aaron Knight, influencing, said, "Spirits have infinitely 
better facilities for moral progress than mortals ; but as to 
how they use them is a matter of choice. I am no fatalist. 
Neither men nor spirits are mere things, but moral actors. 
. . . Certainly, there are planets whose surfaces are so re- 
fined, fruits so sublimated, and atmospheres so ethereal, 
that the inhabitants peopling them, though having an outer 
envelope comparable to the physical body, do not die as the 
term ' death ' is understood by you. They gradually throw off 
the external vesture in particled emanations, but do not for 
a moment cease to be conscious. . . . Spirits are, of course, 
fallible. Many of them do not understand either the laws 
or the effects of psychological control as they should. 
Mediums are both benefited and injured by magnetic in- 
fluences. This depends upon the wisdom and motives of 
the intelligences. . . . The guardian, other things being 
equal, can the most effectually impress a medium. All 
mediums should have in attendance organized circles of 



SANDWICH ISLANDS. 15 

spirits. This is a shield and a safeguard. No effective 
medium is ever left entirely alone. Some member of the 
sympathizing circle continues with him, to minister as neces- 
sity demands. . . . 

" No : none retrograde as a whole. There is no law of abso- 
lute retrogression. While mortal or spirit may retrograde 
morally, they may at the same time be advancing intellec- 
tually ; a man, while declining physically, may be progress- 
ing spiritually. Action must ultimate in progress in some 
direction. Upward, as one of your poets wrote, ' all things 
tend.' " 

THE SANDWICH-ISLAND GROUP. 

This ocean-embosomed cluster of isles, nine in number, 
has some hundred thousand inhabitants. When discovered 
by Capt. Cook, the group was supposed to contain full four 
hundred thousand. Remnants of mounds, temples, and 
ruins indicate it. During the second voyage of this naviga- 
tor, a difficulty arising, a high chief was killed by one of the 
captain's party. The slain chief's brother swore revenge. 
In the midst of the fray, Capt. Cook himself shot a man. 
The natives, who had previously supposed him a god, found 
him decidedly human. Though finally killing him through 
retaliation, they dissected his body for anatomical purposes. 
History and legend agree that these natives were never 
cannibals. 

The entrance to the harbor is through a passage in the 
coral reefs that girdle the island of Oahu. Seen from the 
harbor, Honolulu is exceedingly beautiful. The city, em- 
bowered in fresh green foliage, numbers six thousand ; the 
district, twelve thousand, only about two thousand of whom 
are white. The Hawaiian Hotel, and the public buildings 
generally, would do honor to any larger city. The gardens 
are decidedly tropical. They are iriigated from mountain 
streams. Fruit clogs the market. Sugar-plantations and 
pulu-fields plead for more workmen. The " labor-question '' 



16 AROUND THE WOULD. 

here, as elsewhere, awaits solution. All men are about as 
lazy as they can afford to be. 

It is very common to see native women trooping along the 
streets horseback. Some were richly though quaintly at- 
tired in long riding-habits. They all, like the Turkish and 
Arab women of the East, ride astride their poor-bred horses ; 
and some deck themselves in ribbons and othelo flowers. 
Their dresses are entirely loose and flowing, all the weight 
coming upon the shoulders. 

On the outskirts of the city, 'mid tropical shrubbery and 
graceful palms, I saw taro growing, the original Hawaiian 
food of the natives. It thrives on soil that can be flooded. 
Exceedingly nutritious, it not only tastes, but, when steamed 
in their stone ovens, looks, very much like huge, rough Irish 
potatoes. 

From this taro, they make their poi by pounding it into a 
semi-fluid consistency, and then storing it in gourds and 
calabashes. It is eaten by dipping one — if very thin, two — 
fingers into the pot of poi, and thrusting them quickly into 
the mouth. 

THE MORALS OF THE ISLANDS. 

These Hawaiians are considered by some ethnologists as 
vestiges of the Semitic stock. Others think to the contrary. 
It is certain that the primitive poetry of these natives bears 
a striking resemblance in style to the Hebraic. They prac- 
ticed, when discovered, circumcision, and had what corre- 
sponded to the Israelitish " house of refuge." They had three, 
orders of priests, — Kaula, prophets ; Kilo, magicians or ghost- 
seers; and Kahunas, the teachers. They have a tradition 
among themselves, that they came from Tahita. Europeans 
brought among them liquors and syphilis, and taught them 
war upon the principles of Christian civilization. As a 
people, these aborigines are rapidly dying off from the 
island. Civilization, such as it is, hastens their inevitable 
doom. In twenty years there will probably be no Kanackas, 



SANDWICH ISLANDS. 17 

pure-blooded natives, left upon the Hawaiian Islands. Theii 
moral degeneracy has kept pace with their physical. Though 
nominally Christianized, their " easy virtue " is patent in the 
flocks of half-castes that throng the city and mountain dis- 
tricts. If missionaries have not filled the brains of these poor 
heathen with intelligence, and exalted moral principles, they 
have managed to fill their own purses. 

Morals are at a low ebb. Many white men — Germans, 
French, Portuguese, and some Americans — live with native 
women unmarried. This is considered no social disgrace, 
since commenced many years ago by distinguished officials. 
Color is no bar to office or position. 

The government of these islands was a constitutional mon- 
archy. Queen Emma, who traveled through Europe and our 
country a few years since, became queen by marriage. 

The Sandwich Islands have now become a republic, and de- 
sire annexation to the United States. The natives oppose it. 

Though belief or unbelief in no way affects the truth, still 
the belief of a man, if held in earnest, and woven into the 
spiritual frame of mind, must necessarily exert a controlling 
influence upon the springs of action, and leave its impress 
upon the life. The natives originally believed in good and 
bad spirits, in a future life, and the return of their departed 
from the land of shades. Their idols were the images of 
deified mortals. Dr. Damon, a resident of Honolulu, or some 
of the Polynesian groups, for thirty years, assured us that 
these aborigines all believed in a future existence when first 
visited by missionaries. The belief bubbles up spontaneously 
in the souls of all tribes and races. 

HAWAIIAN SPIRITISM. 

Candid research will ultimately force the concession that 
the lowest and most degraded tribes have deep-rooted ideas 
of gods, spirits, and a future existence. Otherwise, they are 
not men, but monkeys, apes, baboons, chimpanzees, gorillas ! 
Man devoid the cranial organs of hope, veneration, conscien- 



18 AROUND THE WORLD. 

tiousness, ideality, and spirituality, is not a wholeness, — ia 
not man. With these organs, he necessarily conceives of 
another and superior state of existence. His notions may be 
rude ; still they are germinally bedded in truth. Under all 
skies, man naturally believes in the superhuman, in the return 
of departed ancestors, and the care of guardian spirits. This 
is pre-eminently true of this Hawaiian branch of the Polyne- 
sians. Faith of this kind is so rooted in their souls' soil, that 
thirty years' missionary drillings have in no way eradicated 
it. 

Bennett, after describing, in his historic sketches, their 
mythology, and the "tabu imposed by the chiefs," says there 
was always a " class among them who practiced sorcery and 
conjuration, and offered prayers to the spirits." Richardson 
assures us, that, in all past times, " they dealt in divination, 
calling upon the spirits of their dead to assist them in war, 
and bless them in peace. Their gods were the spirits of 
departed heroes." 

A strong effort was early made to convert Kamehameha I. 
to the Christian religion. The purpose signally failed. He 
listened, however, with great gravity to the churchal argu- 
ment for the "necessity of faith in Christ;" and then, says 
Jarvis, he coolly replied, — 

" By faith in your God, you say any thing can be accomplished, and 
the Christian will be preserved from all harm. If so, cast yourself down 
from yonder precipice ; and, if you are preserved, I will believe." 

It was a clincher ! 

SINGULAR SOCIAL CUSTOMS. 

Naturally trusting and affectionate, Hawaiian men, when 
meeting in their more primitive times, embraced and, kissed, 
as do women in civic life. Missionaries, forgetting Paul's 
injunction, " Salute the brethren with a holy kiss," have 
taught them a different way of salutation. Their priesthood 
was hereditary. Each chief, before the consolidation in a 



SANDWICH ISLANDS. 19 

kingdom, had his family priest, who accompanied him to bat- 
tie. In Christian countries this class of men is called chap- 
lains, praying for victory through war, in the name of the 
Prince of peace ! 

In the better period of these islanders, a falsehood was 
considered a fearful offense, and foeticide was unknown. 
The male child then born, and now also, takes the prefer- 
ence. This is the case in the Christian kingdoms of Europe. 
Lunatics were supposed by these Sandwich Island people to 
be obsessed by angry spirits. 

In their old traditionary ages, the man had but one wife. 
Marriage ceremonies, as such, were unknown. Wooing for 
a season, the parties commenced living together, and, if 
reciprocally pleasant, the union was understood to be perma- 
nent ; if unhappy, however, they mutually agreed to separate. 
If children were born into their rude homes, it was then 
considered disgraceful to annul the marital relation. They 
are exceedingly fond of their children, and in every depart- 
ment of life are naturally kind and generous. 

INTELLECTUAL DECLINE. 

Though doubtless true, 

" That through the ages one unceasing purpose runs," 

still there are lost Edens of civilization and culture. If lit- 
erature and art, like the nationalities they crowned, have had 
their ebb and flow, so civilized countries and island tribes 
have had their golden ages now dead and buried. Extant 
monuments, mammoth ruins, and exhumed scrolls, substan- 
tiate the position. 

Who has not been charmed while reading, in Baldwin's 
" Pre-Historic America," of that ancient Peruvian road ex- 
tending over marshes, ravines, rocky precipices, and the great 
chain of the Sierras, — strongly walled on each side, and 
quite as long is the two Pacific railroads ? These macad- 
amized roads were constructed, according to Gomara, long 



20 AROUND THE WORLD. 

before the reigns of the Incas. Humboldt, examining them, 

writes, - — 

" Our eyes rested continually on superb remains of a paved road of the 
Incas. The roadway, paved with well-cut dark porphyritic stone, was 
twenty feet wide, and rested on deep foundations. This road was mar- 
velous. None of the Eoman roads I have seen in Italy, in the South of 
France, or in Spain, appeared to me more imposing than this work of the 
ancient Peruvians." 

So there are remnants of a magnificently paved road 
around the Isle of Maui, one of the Hawaiian group. It 
was constructed long ages ago by a king of the island, named 
Kahihapilani, who was expecting his sister from the island of 
Hawaii. This masonry, as well as templed ruins, point to a 
once high, but now entombed civilization. 

And, what is equally interesting, the native poets of the 
Hawaiian Islands were an order by themselves, something 
like the Druidic bards of Briton. These were called Kahu- 
meles (poet-bards) in ancient times, and were not unlike the 
Homeric ballaclists, and Grecian rhapsodists. Their chant- 
like poems were handed down from father to son ; and they 
proudly sung that in the halcyon ages their ancestors came 
from Asia. Their poems, drawn from natural scenery, were 
weird and musical, but neither measured nor rhythmical. 
This is true of those old compositions of the Vedic ages. 

Declining and degenerate, the Hawaiians have no genuine 
poets now. Some, however, excel in music and mathematics. 
Natives constitute the missionaries' choirs. Many of the old 
Hawaiian chants in praise of their chiefs and their gods have 
been committed to writing by Judge Fanander, for the pur- 
pose of publication. Fortunately, while attending a natives* 
" hula-hula " dance in the queen's gardens, I listened to 
some of these meles, or ballad-songs. 

RECENT PHENOMENA. 

The apostolic " discerning of spirits" is a gift as common 
in "heathen " as Christian lands. The Sandwich Islanders, 



SANDWICH ISLANDS. 21 

though frequently seeing and conversing with departed 
spirit friends, speak of their manifestations with great re- 
serve ; because the missionaries have assured them that all 
such phenomena were the " devices of the Devil." 

The gentlemanly editor of a prominent daily, and an old 
resident of Honolulu, Mr. Prescott, narrated to us several 
interesting incidents relating to Spiritism in his own family, 
and others among the natives of the islands. 

My visit to the Leper Hospital, in the suburbs of Honolulu, 
was deeply interesting. For this disease no specific has been 
found. . . . Among volcanos, Kilauea is thousands of times 
larger than Vesuvius. It is seldom quiet, being an over- 
flowing, ever-bubbling lake of fire, with an area of nearly 
twenty acres. . . . 

Called Dec. 17 to see Bishop Willis — a long-bearded 
English ecclesiastic, wearing long, tight stockings, a sort of 
knee-buckles and a very long coat — a quaint sixteenth- 
century figure. He belongs to the past. 

The present Hawaiian Government, with the wealthy mis- 
sionaries, desires annexation to the United States of America. 
But the masses, especially the natives, are opposed to it. A 
vote relative to annexation has never been submitted to the 
people. 

To-morrow we sail for New Zealand by way of Samoa. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PACIFIC-ISLAND RACES. 

" The two kinds of people on earth that I mean, 
Are the people who lift and the people who lean." 

How true of this human hive, humanity — the workers 
and the drones, the toiling lifters and the lazy, dragging 
leaners ! I hate laziness. 

What a day of bustle, — coaling, loading, transferring, 
packing ! The beeves have been driven in from the moun- 
tains by the natives. Panting, frightened, and fevery with 
heat and rage, they are roped on the wharf by the sailors, 
beaten, thrown to the ground, and tied with strong hemp- 
en cords. Then while bellowing, struggling, and frothing 
at the mouth with very madness, they are dragged by marine 
tackling up into the vessel to be killed and eaten by pas- 
sengers on the voyage. And the crew — sadly do we say 
it — greedily ate the fevered bodies of those poor, bruised, 
dead animals ! In the year 2000, meat-eating will be consid- 
ered a monstrous practice, only paralleled by the cannibalism 
of the South Seas. 

THE DAILY OUTLOOK. 

Sunny are these days, sailing 'mong the Pacific Islands, 
decked in the rich and gorgeous drapery of the tropics. 

' ' Oh ! soft are the breezes that wave the tall cocoa, 
And sweet are the odors that breathe on the gale ; 
Fair sparkles the wave as it breaks on the coral, 
Or wafts to the white beach the mariner's sail *' 



THE PACIFIC-ISLAND RACES. 23 

The Bishop of Oxford describes the inhabitants of Poly- 
nesia as " children of nature, children of the air, children of 
light, children of the sun, children of beauty, taking their 
greatest pleasure in the dance." Though these paradisaical 
isles sparkle like gems in the Pacific, the origin of the races 
peopling them is a study. Ethnology and comparative phi- 
lology can at most but point to the quarries whence nation- 
alities and tribes were hewn. From the rich table-lands of 
India, and the undulating valleys of Iran, came those 
primeval emigrants that gave to the West culture and intel- 
lectual activity. But the extreme East, the Micronesians 
and the Polynesians of the Pacific, whence these inter- 
tropical races? During our week's stay on the Hawaiian 
group of islands, and others since, the natives, their customs, 
laws, languages, and religious ideas, have been a constant 
theme of thought and study. 

It is generally conceded that the languages spoken by the 
millions of Polynesians have the same common structure, 
with such differences as may be resolved into dialects result- 
ing from long non-intercourse. 

When a native New Zealander and Hawaiian meet, 
though more than four thousand miles apart, they are oo 
closely connected lingually, that they very soon engage in a 
free interchange of ideas. This, in some degree, is true of 
the Marquesan, Tahitan, Samoan, and others of the Polyne- 
sian stocks. The system of " taboos " in some form runs 
through all the Southern Polynesian families. 

THE MICRONESIANS. 

Glance at the location of your island neighbors in Ocean- 
ica. Have we not all one father ? Are we not brothers all ? 
The numerous Caroline, Ascension, Gilbert Islands, and 
others adjacent, evidently belong to the Micronesian division, 
and were peopled either by the Indo-Chinese, or Northern 
Malayan races. The ruins on Ponapi, one of the Caroline 
group, built entirely of basaltic prisms, indicate a marvelous 



24 AROUND THE WORLD. 

civilization in the past. The present natives have no con- 
ception why nor by whom such massive walls, parapets and 
vaults were constructed. The present race upon the Gilbert 
Islands has stout physical developments, high cheek-bones, 
fine straight hair, black and glossy. The aquiline nose is 
the rule, and the cerebrum is largely developed. They are 
less savage than some of their trafficking visitors. 

Swarms of children, innocent of any clothing, flock to the 
harbor upon each landing. So prolific are they yet, on the 
greater number of these islands, and so uncontaminated 
with the diseases of foreign civilizations, that their popula- 
tion is deliberately limited by practicing abortion to prevent 
too great a number of hungry mouths. They should study 
the Malthusian method of depopulation, or welcome to their 
sea-girt shores Shaker missionaries to initiate celibate com- 
munities. 

THE MARSHALL ISLES. 

These are a large group of the Micronesian family, ranging 
from 4i° to 12° north latitude. They were first discovered by 
the Spaniards in 1529, and called by them the "good gardens." 
The inhabitants were straight, light-colored, and strangely 
tattooed. Their dress was decidedly Adamic, — fig-leaves 
and mats about their loins ! At present the men wear full 
beards, are energetic, and very hospitable. The women are 
dressed in fine matting, have long black hair, and decorate 
themselves profusely in shell-jewelry. Ocean travelers con- 
sider them beautiful, though minus corset and waterfall, 
pannier and paint. 

They traverse the seas with large retinues, are eminently 
clannish, and count nobility of descent on the mother's side. 
While worshiping deities, they hold the spirits of their an- 
cestors in great reverence. They are skilled, say European 
residents in their midst, in every kind of " incantation and 
necromancy." They consult their mediums when in a state 
of ecstasy, and heal by beating and striking the diseased 



THE PACIFIC-ISLAND RACES. 25 

part. Consecrated groves, and sacred spots, are common 
among them. Their desolate cemeteries are in waving groves 
of cocoanut trees ; and weird-shaped paddles lift their blades 
for tombstones. They are evidently of Japanese extraction. 

THE SAMOANS, OR NAVIGATORS. 

These very important islands, a sort of half-way steamship 
house in the Pacific, for recruiting, repairing, and re-provis- 
ioning, lie between latitudes 13^° and 14i° south, and about 
170° west longitude. Our captain made a short call at this 
group, — nine in number, — too short for our individual pur- 
pose. They are volcanic in origin, safe to approach, and 
partially belted with coral reefs. Pago-Pago is a deep, land- 
locked harbor on the south side of Tutuila. Upolu is the 
most thickly populated, containing twenty thousand inhabit- 
ants. Our gentlemanly commander, of the steamer had 
permitted us to study his maps and charts of this densely- 
wooded group of isles — gems of the ocean — before reaching 
them. The afternoon approach was too grand and gorgeous 
for the pen to paint. The sea was a polished mirror ; the sky, 
glass ; the sun, well adown the western spaces, gold ; and 
the scattering clouds, crimson and purple, were chariots of 
fire. 

The steam checked, and the vessel at rest, the natives 
flocked to us like birds to a banquet. Physically, they are a 
splendidly-made race, with full, high foreheads, wavy beards, 
and white, exquisitely-set teeth. They are light in color, 
and quick in motion. They have dark-brown hair, eyes 
black and expressive. The occasional reddish hair seen had 
been bleached. Honest and trusting, they are evidently of 
Indo-Malayan origin. 

The women are well-formed, healthy, handsome, and, what 
is more, are famed for their chastity. Both men and women 
go as naked as new-born babes, except weirdly-woven leaves 
and sea-grass aprons around their loins. Our passengers 
bought of them war-clubs, fans, fruits, head-gearings, birds, 



26 ABOUND THE WOELD. 

baskets, spears, and shells. Missionaries are among them. 
Already they exhibit hopeful signs of civilization in wishing 
to barter for tobacco, whiskey, fancy-colored clothing, and 
lime preparations for bleaching their hair. Some of these 
natives bleach or color the hair red; Americans, black: 
tastes differ. 

The scenery upon these islands is transcendently beautiful. 
Cascades are numerous, the valleys fertile, and vegetation, 
varied and luxuriant. Tropical fruits, cocoanuts, pine- 
apples, bananas, citrons, bread-fruit, oranges, limes, sugar- 
cane, coffee, taro anddye-wooc) trees abound in rich profusion. 
The largest portion of Upolo has a fine garden soil, where 
large springs of pure water bubble up, and flow in thousands 
of little streams toward the sea. The whole group is ex- 
ceedingly valuable. Action has already been taken by the 
United States toward annexation. 

Among the code of laws drawn by these native chiefs, to 
be recognized in commercial relations between the United 
States and the Samoan Islands, are the following : — 

" 5th. All trading in distilled or spirituous liquors, or any kind of in- 
toxicating drink, is absolutely prohibited. Any person so offending shall 
be fined one hundred dollars on conviction before a mixed court. All 
such liquors found on shore, and kept for sale or barter, shall be seized 
and destroyed. If any native is found intoxicated, the individual who 
has supplied him with drink shall pay a fine of ten dollars. If any for- 
eigner be found drunk or riotous, he shall pay a fine of ten dollars. 

"6th. Any person found guilty of offering inducement to a native 
female to prostitute herself to a foreigner, to pay a fine of ten dollars; 
and any native female found guilty of prostituting herself to a foreigner, 
to pay a fine of twenty dollars." 

And these Samoan chiefs are called " savages," " degraded 
heathen," to whom tobacco-using, wine-drinking Christian 
missionaries must be sent to save them from hell ! 

I can but deplore that conceited ignorazice which charac- 
terizes two classes of Americans, — radical rationalists who 
crankly assert that there " are islanders in the Pacific, and 



THE PACIFIC-ISLAND RACES. 27 

ferocious tribes in Africa, that have not the faintest idea of 
God or another state of existence ; " and pompous clergymen 
who everlastingly prate about the "polluted and fiendish 
heathen " of Oceanica. We spent Christmas at Apia. 

THE FEEJEES. 

Islands, like individuals, have their reputations. Those 
dotting an ocean which covers one-third of the entire surface 
of the globe should be more thoroughly surveyed and ex- 
plored. The Feejees, constituting quite an archipelago, contain 
one hundred and fifty -four islands, seventy of which are in- 
habited. They are governed by chiefs. The natives, though 
dark-hued, are noble in mien, shrewd, and enterprising. 
Missionaries have given them a hard name. Bear in mind 
the Feejeean side of the story has neither been heard nor pub- 
lished. They stoutly deny having been aggressors, yet 
admit themselves good at retaliation. A. G. Findlay, F. R. 
G. S., says, — 

" These islanders have been misrepresented. Late visitors speak very 
highly of their honesty, cleanliness, refinement, and virtue." 

The men have heavy, bushy heads of hair, and wear full 
beards. When discovered by the navigator Tasman, they 
knew nothing of the venereal diseases that accompany Chris- 
tian civilization. The taint of syphilis is not yet common 
among them. They had, when first visited, no idols. They 
believed in transmigration and immortality. They wor- 
shiped in caves and groves. They also had their mediums, 
who, when in ecstatic states, foamed at the mouth ; but every 
utterance breathed in this rude trance-condition was carefully 
noted as the voice of a god. 

They build their houses in cocoanut groves. Often they 
are umbrella-shaped, and rudely thatched. It requires little 
or no labor to sustain life. Enterprise is little more than a 
dream all through these equatorial regions. The English are 
aiming to get full control of the Feejee group for cotton- 
growing, and. a military basis. 



28 AROUND THE WORLD. 

HOW WERE THESE ISLANDS PEOPLED ? 

What the camel is to the Arab, the horse to the Asian 
Mongul, the canoe is to these islanders. In the construction 
of their proas, — sea-crafts made of bread-fruit wood, — they 
display great talent. The better class of them will carry a 
hundred men in the open sea. The sails and rigging are 
managed with great dexterity. They provision these proas 
with cocoanuts, taro, preserved bread-fruit, &c. ; which, with 
their skill in fishing, enables them to sustain voyages for sev- 
eral months. This partially explains the method by which 
the different and widely separate Pacific isles may have been 
peopled. The Malay race — nomads of the sea — whether 
for adventure, commerce, or plunder, had but to put their 
wives and utensils into their canoes, and, drifting with the 
prevailing trade- winds, were sure to reach some island, inter- 
mingling with the inhabitants ; or, if uninhabited, establish- 
ing a new race. 

Not only have these Polynesian natives swift-sailing canoes, 
but they have rudely-constructed maps of their own inven- 
tion, made of large tropical leaves, and sticks, tied in straight 
and curved lines, indicating ocean winds and currents. And, 
further, Japanese and Chinese junks have been blown to sea, 
performing long voj^ages, and finally stranding, with their 
occupants, upon distant islands. Bancroft tell us that these 
have even reached the continent of America. 

In December, 1882, one of these junks was wrecked on 
Oahu, near Honolulu, after having been tempest-tossed 
eleven months. Only four, out of a crew of nine, survived. 
The population of Lord North's Island must have originated 
in some way similar to this, as it is over a thousand miles dis- 
tant from any other land. 

Furthermore, the mariner's compass is not new. Naviga- 
tion is old as tradition. China was known to Egypt more 
than three thousand years before the Christian era, and a 
commercial intercourse maintained between the countries. 



THE PACIFIC-ISLAND RACES. 29 

Africa was circumnavigated by ancient Egyptian mariners ; 
and among the relics of that old civilization may be traced 
indications of an acquaintance with the American coast. In 
that period the geography of the world was well understood. 
Ancient spirits inform me that many of these Pacific islands 
are the unburied prominences of a submerged Polynesian 
continent having an immense antiquity. The speech of this 
great oceanic nation, derived from the primitive Sanscrit of 
say fifteen thousand years since, tinged with the Indo-Malay, 
lies at the base of the present Polynesian languages. Rem- 
nants of the ancient Sanscrit have been discovered in the 
highlands of Central Africa. 

Our captain, unrolling his Pacific charts one day, directed 
my attention to the locations of over sixty islands, definitely 
marked by the old navigators, that have entirely disappeared, 
sunk in fathomless depths. In consonance with these cata- 
clysmic changes, Mr. Brace, in his " Races of the World," as- 
sures us that both Dana and Hale notice evidences of a 
gradual subsidence of islands even within the historic period ; 
the ruins of temples on Banabe, for instance, being found 
partly submerged by the sea. Biblical dogmatists have 
sought to trace relations, and draw parallels, between the 
Israelitish " lost tribes " and the Polynesians. This theory 
vanishes like mist, however, when it is considered that the 
Hebrews themselves were derivatives, — the refuse and clan- 
nish outlaws sloughed off from the mature civilization of 
Egypt. Burrowing with, these Hebrews borrowed their 
religious notions from, the lower castes of the Egyptians. 
They were afterwards modified into Mosaic theology. And 
Egypt, be it remembered, received her religious doctrines 
largely from India. 

CIVTLIZED TREATMENT OF THE ISLANDERS. 

The testimony of missionaries and explorers is alike uni- 
form, that Pacific traders have, with few exceptions, exhibited 
the worst traits of meanness, injustice, and rank dishonesty. 



30 ABOUND THE WOULD. 

Dr. Damon of Honolulu said a certain shipmaster, dealing 
with the Marshall Islanders, agreed to pay for cocoanut-oil a 
fixed amount of tobacco; but, in place, delivered "boxes 
filled with pieces of old tarred ropes cut up to correspond in 
length with tobacco-plugs." This was civilization ! Anothei 
merchant trader, dealing with them, sold them for " stipulated 
brandies, kegs filled with salt water." 

Two captains of whalers from Massachusetts under friendly 
pretenses coaxed several chiefs aboard ; then, moving out into 
the harbor, demanded a heavy ransom for their delivery. 
Others, aflame with passion, have with basest motives induced 
the native women to come upon their vessels. And, when 
these poor natives have retaliated, the* cry has been " savages," 
" cannibals," " fiendish heathen ! " 

When the New-Zealand aborigines were at war, a few years 
since, with the English for the illegal seizure of their lands, 
the unsuspecting Maoris were unprepared for an attack, be- 
cause it was the Christian sabbath. They had been taught 
that Christian soldiers would neither attack nor fight on the 
Lord's Day. And yet, on this sacred day, they rushed out 
well-prepared, attacking and butchering hundreds of the 
trusting heathen. The wrongs, deceptions, and diseases of 
civilization have been so burnt into the bodies and souls of 
these aborigines, that they distrust everybody with a white 
skin. Are they blamable ? 

The distinguished Rosser sadly says, — 

" It is painful to be obliged to report that disease is now being rapidly 
introduced even among the Ralik Islanders by whale-ships passing the 
islands, and which now permit natives with females on board their ves- 
sels. How sad that the safe residences of missionaries among them 
should be the causes of attracting physical and moral death to their 
shores ! With but few exceptions, the contact with the representatives 
of civilization serves to render their diseases more deadly, and their 
vices more vicious." 

So far as missionaries have taught these islanders to read 
and write, taught them the industries of civilization, they 



THE PACIFIC-ISLAND RACES. 31 

have done a good work. On the other hand, their shrewd, 
selfish conduct, and theological dogmas, have proven a curse 
to the native mind. To get a correct opinion of the millions 
peopling the Pacific islands, their manners, habits, purposes, 
laws, and religious convictions, one must see and converse 
with them, with old voyagers, explorers, and non-sectarian 
residents. 

. . . To thoroughly know the Samoan natives is to love 
them. They are naturally honest, peaceful, affectionate and 
hospitable. What a pity to have them Christianized! They 
have a soft, warm, brown skin. Their hair is bushy and black 
unless bleached with lime. They wear mulberry-bark cloth 
about their loins. The men are generally tattooed. They 
go through with the process about the time that the youth 
reaches "pubic virility" — assuming the toga virilis. 

The distinguished writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, was 
buried up near the summit of an evergreen mountain over- 
looking Apia. He loved the native Samoans, and dying, 
wished his mortal remains buried upon one of Samoa's sunny 
isles. 



CHAPTER V. 

OCEAN-BOUND TOWARDS AUCKLAND. 

" Over space the clear banner of mind is unfurled 
And the habits of God are the laws of the world." 

Owing to the dictates of latitute and longitude to-day, 
we dropped a day — going to our berths Tuesdaj^ night and 
waking up Thursday morning. This conies from sailing 
westward. 

The sunsets are gorgeous. It is a fitful season for medi- 
tation. Some poet thus sings of man's origin : — 

" Heaven's exile, straying from the orb of light." 

Who at times does not feel himself an exile, a prisoner ? 
The world is a hotel. The soul is imprisoned in the body ; 
and a fashionable conservatism would make us all moral pris- 
oners by compelling conformity to the shams of society. 
Why not sleep each alone, as did Pythagoras ? Why not 
wear linen only, as did Apollonius ? Why not wear the 
hair and beard long, as did sage and savant in the palmy 
period of the lost arts ? If shaving at all, why not be con- 
sistent, shaving away the eyebrows, and even the hair, as do 
the Chinese ? 

Louis XII. ascended the French throne at the age of 
nine, beardless. His courtiers, famous for their cringing 
servility, rushed to the barbers, and came away clean-faced. 
That stern old state counselor, Sully, refused to shave, as 
he had previously done under the reign of King Henry IV. 
These vain, face-scraped courtiers often made merry at the 
attorney's odd appearance. Sully, bearing their jests for a 



OCEAN-BOUND TOWARDS AUCKLAND. 33 

time, said to the king, " Sire, when your father of glori- 
ous memory consulted me upon important affairs, the first 
move he made was to turn away all apes and buffoons from 
his court ! " This silenced the French dandies. 

Our floating institution darts like an arrow from crest to 
crest. The passengers are jolly in defiance of the discom- 
forts. Why not make the best of every thing ? Why peddle 
pains and aches to excite and elicit sympathy ? Any thing 
but a peevish, fault-finding disposition. John the Rev- 
elator heard " music," not complaining, in heaven. The 
wise patiently submit to life's destiny, having learned to 
" labor and to wait." All this mental unrest, this hot seeth- 
ing, this stern struggling, this toiling up the steeps, this 
magnetic fire that comes pouring down from the higher 
realms, is only 

"The spirit of the years to come, 
Yearning to mix itself with life. ' ' 

Watching the tremulous waves, this morning, while bap- 
tized by a dripping shower, I j^earned to stand upon their 
white crests, and have all the world'?! dust washed away from 
my garments, making my heart so warm, so sunn} x , so like a 
bank of fresh, fragrant flowers, that the careworn and weary 
earth would delight to thereon rest, in faith and trust. 

My fellow-passengers have engaged to-day in all kinds of 
amusements, — sleight-of-hand, trickery, story-telling, and 
ventriloquizing in imitation of pigs and puppies; any thing 
to be heroes. My mania for books makes me an odd one. 
The pleasure is exquisite. Blessings on book-makers ! . Oh 
that men would think more, write more, converse more, and 
talk less ! 

Blab and witty words are cheap. Books all afire with the 
personalities of their authors nourish the soul. Pythagoras 
enjoined not only purity and patience, but seven years' 
silence, upon certain of his students, as preparatory steps to 
wisdom. This way, this way, O Samian ! 



34 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Public speaking on the ocean is more novel than pleas- 
ant. Invited by a committee, through the purser, a nice 
fellow, to address the officers and passengers upon the 
divine principles of the spiritual philosophy in their rela- 
tion to immortality, we so did, Dr. following in a most 

interesting manner. In accordance with an arrangement 
between the doctor, his attending spirit-guides, and ourself, 
previous to sailing, we held semi-weekly seances for spirit- 
communications. In answer to several inquiries, Mr. Knight 
said, — 

' ' We can not well draw the line of demarkation between physical mat- 
ter and spirit-substance, they so interblend and over-lap. There are 
atoms, and molecular particles of physical matter, in their highly subli- 
mated state, more ethereal perhaps than some portions of spirit-sub- 
stance. This unsteady upward-reaching is seen in every direction. 
There possibly may be gorillas with reason flaming up to a higher point 
than in some of the lowest tribes of men. But mark, they, the gorillas, 
have reached their acme ; while these lower tribes have but just started 
in the line of human possibilities. 

" All insects, all venomous reptiles, and brutes, are tottering and im- 
perfect structures ; and it is illogical to predicate immortality of imper- 
fection. The arch can not stand without the keystone. . . . 

"By your request, I have inquired of John who was meant by 
the ' elect lady,' in his second epistle ; and the gist of the response was, 
the phrase elect lady, a symbolical expression, referred to the Chris- 
tian religion in its purity. This lady elect was the lady of his faith, the 
most spiritual religion of that age. Spirituality pertains to the femi- 
nine, intellectuality to the masculine." 

A strange controlling intelligence now comes, making the 
medium exceedingly spasmodic. Listen! It is a weird, 
unknown tongue. What does it mean ? . . . He has gone, 
and Mr. Knight comes to explain : — 

" This spirit was a chief of the Oahu Island, who hived in a mortal: 
body over a century since. He desired to inform you that himself and 
his people believed in spirit-intercourse when on earth, though it was 
connected with much superstition. Since his transition, he has pro- 
gressed rapidly ; and still he cherishes a deep interest in the remnants 
of his race. He is very desirous to have you remain on the islands you 



OCEAN-BOUND TOWARDS AUCKLAND. 35 

have left, and preach true doctrines, in contradistinction from the false 
and gloomy theology that is being taught by missionaries." 

Another change. Swailbach, a German spirit, comes. 
The accent is unmistakable. 

" I have just taken possession to say that I had visited these natives 
as a spirit many times in the past. They are Aryanic rather than 
Semitic in origin. In a very remote period, this root-race moved south- 
easterly from the high plateaus of India, through Malayan lands, towards 
the Pacific islands." 

Do you understand the language of these natives ? 

" Not as they speak it in then* mortal bodies ; and yet I can converse 
freely with them when disrobed of mortality. Ours is largely soul lan- 
guage. The movement of a muscle, throbbing of a nerve, or slightest 
facial expression even, of a spirit, is language, and self-interpreting. 
Study of many earthly languages, unless for the purpose of teaching, is 
time unwisely spent. Languages, earthly in origin, like nationalities, 
gradually fade away as spirits ascend and unfold interiorily, the tendency 
being from the special to the universal. ' ' 

Aaron Knight, again controlling, said, — 

" Those failing to make the right marks along the pathway of human 
life have to retrace their steps after entering spirit-life. There is a band 
of explorers with us. They are properly naturalists. Some of them 
are very ancient spirits. . . . We are now passing over the ruins of a 
grand old city, which had vast surburban forests. The petrified rem- 
nants indica te a likeness to the mammoth trees of California. They 
were an enl Lghtened race. The people lived in stone houses, and were 
engaged in mechanical and pastoral pursuits. They were the progeni- 
tors of your American niound-builders. Were your clairvoyant eyes 
opened, you would this moment see under debris, sands, and sea-plants, 
the scattered remnants of a long-forgotten civilization. As volcanic isles 
and lofty mountains have been thrust up from the ocean's depths, so 
islands and continents have sunk 'mid commotions unknown to earthly 
history. The sinking of the new Atlantis continent some nine thousand 
years before the Platonian period, as mentioned by Plato, Solon, and the 
Egyptian priests, is no myth." 



36 AROUND THE WORLD. 

USES AND ABUSES OF SPIRITUAL SEANCES. 

" You, and multitudes of others," exclaimed the spirit Knight, 
" should never sit in circles. Many of the best mediums on earth have 
never even attended a seance. And yet for scientific observations, or 
for obtaining physical manifestations, circles help to more readily concen- 
trate the magnetic forces. But to see clairvoyants, to see the impres- 
sional, or the truly inspired, sitting in promiscuous circles, holding 
hands, and imbibing diverse aural exhalations, is to us mentally painful. 

" Morbid and nervously sensitive natures require, or think they require, 
a constant change. They have a mania for the stimulus of seances, not 
understanding that promiscuous magnetic blendings are as injurious to 
the soul as sexual promiscuity is to the body. These, all these practices 
opposed to the natural laws of life, yield but thorns for the flesh, and 
obsessions for the spirit. . . . Every mortal has a guardian, and often 
this guardian spirit does not wish the individual to become a medium. 
Spiritualists seem to greatly lack wisdom relating to the nature and mis- 
sion of mediumship. Only the few are fitted for it." 

HATS AND BALD HEADS. 

Overboard went a hat. It broke the lull of the hour. 
Did the winds reason ? "What do men wear hats for, — those 
tall, silken, stove-pipe, cylinder-shaped hats ? 

Indians in the West, and Polynesians in the Pacific, have 
no bald heads. These natives, taught by Nature, let God's 
sunshine and cooling breezes fan their bare heads. Is there 
not much to be learned of " savages " ? 

In Christ's Hospital, the " Blue-Coat School," London, 
founded by Edward VI., the boys, even the seniors, all go 
bareheaded. This was a condition of the endowment. And, 
though they thread city streets in the hottest weather, there 
has never a case of sunstroke been known among them. 

THE ITALIAN TEACHER. 

To-day Parisi Lendanta controlled the medium again. He 
is an Italian spirit, profound and peerless. Among other 
things he said, — 

" We are now passing over mountain ranges towering up from the bot- 
tom of the ocean. These lofty rocky eminences serve somewhat to hold 



OCEAX-BOUND TOWARDS AUCKLAND. 37 

the waters in check, and render them ' Pacific' This ocean has no such 
raised plateau across the bed-surface as has the Atlantic. Owing to its 
uneven depths, and rough volcanic ridges, it would be difficult to cable." 

His elucidation of the atmospheric and electric stratifica- 
tions above us was singularly philosophical. It is im- 
possible to fully report him. He flourished near the close 
of the Middle Ages, — that period which elapsed between 
the decline of ancient learning, and the revival. The Dark 
Ages are said to have ceased about the year 1400. They 
terminated, however, at various times in the different coun- 
tries of Europe. The destruction of feudalism, the inven- 
tion of printing, and the discovery of America by Columbus, 
mark the general period of resurrection from the darkness 
of the mediaeval ages. 

I find this spirit, Parisi, perfectly familiar with the his- 
tories of Petrarch, Tasso, Dante, Ariosto, and other Italian 
litterateurs. Dante's ideal of the old Latin poets was Virgil, 
much of whose fame was owing to the Fourth Eclogue, 
interpreted by churchal fathers as a prophecy of Jesus Christ. 
Virgil quoted Livy and Lucan to prove that gods and angels 
had wrought spiritual marvels through mortals during all the 
ages of antiquity. The sibylline oracles should be exten- 
sively read by scholars. 

ONE OF THE SOUTH-SEA ISLANDS. 

January 1, 1897. — Safely in Auckland, New Zealand, dis- 
tant from New York nearly nine thousand miles. The city, 
built upon high land, looks fresh and vigorous. The gardens 
come down close to the sea. Inclusive of suburbs, it num- 
bers fifty-five thousand. Natives in the province of Auckland, 
divided into five tribes, number some twenty thousand. June 
and July are the coldest months of the year; and January 
and February, corresponding to July and August in England 
and America, are the warmest. Neither serpents nor noxious 
reptiles of any species have been found upon the New-Zea- 
land islands. Toads and frogs are also unknown. Has some 



38 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Saint Patrick here lifted his magic wand ? The original in- 
habitants call themselves Maoris. They are a dark race, but 
athletic, brave, ingenious, and intelligent. Efforts to Chris- 
tianize them have not been very successful. In the New 
Zealand group they number forty or fifty thousand. Racially 
they belong to that branch of the Polynesians that are of 
Indo-Malayan origin. They have handsome black hair, 
straight or aquiline noses, and well-balanced brains. They 
tattoo themselves. 

Auckland remained the capital of New Zealand till 1864, 
when it was removed to Wellington. The great attraction 
of Auckland, like San Diego, California, is its harbor. This 
is simply magnificent, being fringed with evergreen hills and 
dotted with verdure-clad islands. Its museum abounding in 
Polynesian curios, its art gallery rich in paintings, and its 
large free public library unique in manuscripts and rare old 
books, all combine to present a panorama of the good and the 
beautiful. An excursion out and up on to Mount Eden, an 
extinct volcano, was exceedingly enjoyable. All around may 
be seen the craters of other volcanoes. In some far-away his- 
toric period this must have been a G-ehenna corner of the 
world. 

Only three or four hours by steamer from this city are the 
famous Wairnera Hot Springs, situated in a most charming 
spot, with inviting scenery in every direction, hot swimming- 
baths, thickly-wooded hills and lovely evergreen lawns. 



CHAPTER VI. 



NEW ZEALAND. 



" I have come from a mystical land of Light 
To a strange country ; 
This morn I came, I must go to-night — 
But others are coming, women and men, Eternally." 

Certainly — coming and going, moving in cycles ! This 
is the divine method. If essential spirit, as the sages of the 
past and the seers to-day teach, is substance — if the spirit- 
ual is the real, and if this objective life is but the shadow- 
world of effects, then, that parliaments of angels should 
conceive plans above to be executed on earth is both possible 
and natural. All conscious intelligences, from archangel 
down to man, must necessarily sympathize. None of us are 
wholly our own ; uncontrollable circumstances affect and un- 
seen helpers influence us. And so I am in New Zealand, north 
and south at different times. 

The mental atmosphere of Auckland is unlike that of Syd- 
ney and Otago. Its aural emanations differ materially from 
that of Victoria. It is more Scottish. It is stiffer, sterner, 
and not so flexible. One breathes equally free in Melbourne 
and America. 

Constantly summering, and wintering too, under the South- 
ern Cross, the evergreen foliage of New Zealand — the Britain 
of the South — literally charms one. The scenery seems a 
blending of Swiss with the Scottish Highlands. As I see 
the clear waters and the fern-clad hillsides from the win- 
dows of "mine host" — Mr. Redmayne — this sunny Febru- 
ary morning, they remind me not a little of deeply wooded 



40 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

isles reposing under Ionian skies, rough, rugged, and yet 
inviting, in some respects, as the gardens of the Hesperides. 
God be praised for every hill and valley, and tree and flower ! 

In these islands the indigenous trees, whether ornamental 
or valuable for building purposes, retain their native verdure 
throughout the year. When these islands were discovered 
by the Dutch navigator, Tasman, 1642, they were inhabited 
by a bold, athletic, dark-skinned race, supposed, while closely 
related to the Hawaiians, to have descended from the Malays ; 
others say from the Central Americans. They are called 
Maoris; the word meaning "primitive inhabitants." In 
Capt. Cook's time, and after, some of the tribes were can- 
nibals. These natives, though superior, on the whole, to 
most aborigines, are fading away. They understand their 
destiny. There have been at times some of these Maoris in 
the General Assembly. Britain has set Columbia a good 
example in this matter. May we not hope to see, at no dis- 
tant day, both Indians and women in our American Congress? 

New Zealand is nearly on the opposite side of the globe 
from Great Britain, the precise antipodes being a small island 
seven hundred miles to the southeast. The two islands des- 
ignated as the North and the Middle, separated by Cook's 
Straits, are over a thousand miles in length, volcanic in for- 
mation, and contain about sixty million acres. Seen from 
the ocean, the land is rough and barren ; and yet the country 
has fine plains, open valleys, beautiful springs and rivers, 
and is unsurpassed in value for agricultural purposes. I 
have met wool-buyers here from New York and the New 
England States. Having a seaboard extent of some four 
thousand miles, with several splendid harbors, this country 
is destined to occupy a very important position in trade and 
commerce, in fact it does already. 

CLIMATE OF NEW ZEALAND. 

Though one of the finest in the world, the climate is far 
warmer and more genial on the western than on the eastern 



NEW ZEALAND. 



41 



coast of this group. The average rainfall is twenty-nine 
inches. The atmosphere is light and buoyant, while the 
winds are continually freshened by traversing an immense 
expanse of ocean. Not a flake of snow is seen in the 
northern island of this group, save in the highlands. At 
an elevation of six thousand feet, however, the snow is 
perpetual. 

These islands unlike many in the South Pacific, are emi- 




A Tattooed New Zealander. 



nently adapted for agricultural and pastoral pursuits. The 
sunny valley of the Taieri, the undulating plains, the neatly 
tilled fields in the rural districts, with millions of choice yet 
unoccupied acres, incline one to ask, " Why do tens of thou- 
sands remain in Britain to beg or starve ? England has col- 
onies and provinces enough to supply multitudes with homes, 
thus feeding her over-crowded population. Why do they not 
emigrate?" And so of New York and other great American 



42 AROUND THE WORLD. 

cities ; millions prefer to stay in them and half-starve rather 
than to go out on the great prairies of the West and till the 
soil. 

BOTANIZING IN FERN-FIELDS. 

While in Australia and New Zealand, I went out several 
times with botanizing parties. Though fatiguing, it was 
thrillingly interesting ; and the more so, because — as in 
Ireland — there are in New Zealand neither frogs, toads, nor 
serpents. How is this, since no St. Patrick banished them ? 
Fuchser was a German botanist ; and the small, yet beautiful 
flowering plant in America, named after him, is a native tree 
in these islands, with a trunk from a few to eighteen inches 
in diameter. Tramping over the hills, one is continually re- 
minded of extinct volcanoes and the carbonaceous period. 
Some of the tree-ferns are over one foot in diameter. They 
grow straight and erect as chiseled pillars, while their long, 
arching, thick-ribbed leaves spread out like roofs of dainti- 
est beauty, through which sun-rays can scarcely gleam. The 
birds we saw on the mountains were few, but exceedingly 
tame. These natives, the Maoris, neither shoot nor other- 
wise harm them. What a lesson to Christian sportsmen ! 
The kiwi is the last living representative of the New Zea- 
land wingless birds. These wild birds, so called, will some- 
times take crumbs from the hand, and peck at the nails in 
your boot-heels when sitting down to rest in a thicket. The 
moa, a gigantic wingless bird, corresponding to the giraffe 
in the animal kingdom, has long been extinct. The bones 
are valuable to naturalists. Several skeletons of this bird 
may be seen in the Christchurch Museum, nine, ten, and even 
twelve feet high. The flesh was eaten by the Maoris ; the 
feathers were used as ornaments, and their skulls for holding 
fcattooing-powders. 



NEW ZEALAND. 43 

MAGNIFICENT SCENERY AND MINERAL SPRINGS. 

Among the natural wonders of this island group, are Ihe 
geysers, or boiling lakes. They are said to far surpass those 
of Iceland. Columns of steam, rising from these volcano- 
heated springs, may be seen above the white cliffs while 
sailing along the coast. Approaching them, the roar seems 
like mighty engines madly working in the bowels of the 
earth. And, what is singular, no two throw up water of 
exactly the same character. Some are clear as crystal, others 
are dark-hued and muddy ; some are impregnated with 
acids, some taste of soda, many contain sulphur, and one is 
salt as the briny ocean ; but they are all intensely hot and 
boiling. The natives make use of them for all kinds of 
skin diseases and rheumatic complaints. Not far distant 
from these springs, on the North Island, are the Tarata Falls, 
fringed with weird shrubbery and incrusted boughs. The 
sprays and glassy sheets, pouring over molded alabaster, are 
strikingly beautiful. Below are delightful baths of different 
temperatures. The baths of the ancient Romans, so famous 
in history, could not have surpassed these adjacent to the 
boiling lakes. The crystallized terraces are absolutely mag- 
nificent. Te Roto Wanapanapa is a strange-looking greasy 
lake of yellowish-green water, clear, cold, and deep. There 
are hot, muddy springs close by, throwing up a gray- 
colored, greasy clay, which the roaming Maoris call Kaikai, 
and eat with avidity. The prettiest hot spring is Nawharua, 
called the Moss Spring. It is used for cooking purposes. 
The quantity of sulphur around some of these lakes is enor- 
mous; and the mineral impregnations give the waters all 
kinds of colors. Some of the terraces are pink, some pur- 
ple, and others white or orange, caused by crystallizations. 
Names written on them are soon coated over, becoming per- 
manent; while fern-leaves, flowers, and the fine swinging 
twigs, seem to have been converted into stalactite-shaped 
crystals of silver and gold. No painter can put this scenery 



44 AROUND THE WORLD. 

upon canvas. A Walter Scott or Bulwer-Lytton could 
hardly do the subject justice. The prince of all romancers, 
Dumas, would fail. 

WINES AT EUNEBALS. 

Officiating once at a funeral in Dunedin, New Zealand, 
there were Avines put upon the same table with the uncof- 
fined corpse. After I had spoken the words of consolation, 
the sectarian neighbors present, and a portion of the mourn- 
ers, " imbibed." This is quite common, I am told, at Christian 
burials. 

Think of it, — wines at births and wines at f unerais : 
Think of it, O ye priests ! who, guzzling wines, beers, and 
brandies, solemnly preach that " no drunkard can enter the 
kingdom of heaven ! " Is it not to the silly and stupid cus- 
tom of " entertaining " by drink that Hamlet alludes, when 
he says to Horatio, " It is a custom more honored in the 
breach than the observance " ? The peerless Shakspeare 
makes Cassio to say, " Oh, that men should put an enemy in 
their mouths to steal away their brains ! that we should with 
joy, pleasure, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into 
beasts ! " 

During an English election overthrowing the reigning 
Gladstone party, both the Scriptures and liquors were used 
at public gatherings for political purposes. Flags and ban- 
ners bore this inscription : " Beer and the Bible — a national 
beverage and a national Church!'''' Chinese, Persians, Arabs, 
"heathens of the East," often taunt and scourge Christians 
for their habitual drunkenness. One of Buddha's command- 
ments was, " Drink no liquors, neither wines ; but walk 
steadily in the path of purity." Mohammed said, " O true 
believers ! surely wines and games are an abomination, a 
snare of Satan." The heathen (so called) of Asia, have 
wines neither upon their sideboards, nor even at their 
funerals. 



NEW ZEALAND. 45 



CANNIBALISM. 



As one stimulus leads to another, why should not meat- 
eating open the way to cannibalism ? If, according to the 
unphilosophical epicure, flesh is a better food than vegetables, 
grains, and fruits, and higher, too, in the scale of sustenance, 
why not subsist upon it altogether ? And so, if human flesh 
is still higher, more readily assimilating with the juices and 
forces of the system, because magnetically humanized, why 
not eat that also ? The Maori cannibals of New Zealand did 
this very thing. When the giant-like moa-birds failed to 
supply necessary meat, the natives resorted to cannibalism ; 
eating, first, enemies slain in battle. Animal food they must 
and would have. 

One old Maori told me that he had helped eat eighteen 
human beings. He declared that baked man and baked pig 
tasted very much alike. Horse flesh is eaten in London and 
Paris ; and snakes are eaten by certain African tribes. 

The Rev. Mr. Baker said to me, while at a dinner-part} 7 
given by the Rev. Dr. Lang, Sydney, " I have visited one 
hundred and ten of the South-Sea Islands, and am perfectly 
acquainted with their manners, customs, regulations, and 
religious notions. They believe in one or more gods, and in 
an existence hereafter. Those on the Isle of Lifu, Loyalty 
Group, Western Polynesia, believe that the good spirits of 
their ancestors — whom they sometimes see as apparitions — 
dwell on the sunny side of the island, and the bad spirits 
among the lagoons on the other. They are dark complex- 
ioned, and capable of a high civilization. Some of these 
islanders yet continue their cannibal practices." This cler- 
gyman personally knew one old chief who had helped to eat 
and digest thirty human beings. They generally bake them. 
It is considered an honor to drink the blood, and feast upon 
certain parts of the bodies, of those slain on their battle- 
fields. They believe the silly adage that every part 
strengthens the part allied to the animal — or to the man- 
corpse being eaten. 



46 AROUND THE WORLD. 

MAN-EATING UNNATURAL. 

Animals, only in exceptional cases, devour each other. It 
was not innate barbarism, nor a monstrous heathenism, that 
drove the South-Sea Islanders to eat their fellows. It may 
be accounted for in the extermination of the moa-birds and 
the native rats, depriving them of flesh-food. Europeans, 
when shipwrecked and at the point of starvation, have laid 
hold of and greedily devoured their companions. History re- 
lates many occurrences of this kind. Before casting too many 
stones at those " vile savages," it were well to glance at an- 
tiquity. Donovan, in Lardner's Cyclopedia, assures us that 
" our own ancestors were of the number of these cannibal 
epicures." Diodorus Siculus charges the Britons with being 
anthropophagi ; and St. Jerome, living in the fifth century 
of the Christian era, accuses the British tribes, not only of 
a partiality for human flesh, but a " fastidious taste for cer- 
tain delicate parts of it." Gibbon brings the same accusa- 
tion against the Caledonians. Allied by a common bond of 
sympathy, war in Christian nations, and cannibalism among 
the native islanders of the Pacific, must perish together. 

THEOLOGICAL CANNIBALISM. 

Did you ever attend the Sunday services of the Ritualists? 
What a display of millinery ! — the alb, girdle, stole, maniple, 
and chasuble ; referring, it is said, to the trial and death- 
scene of Jesus ! After the waving of the incense, comes the 
administration of the eucharist, which eucharistic elements 
are declared to be the " veritable flesh and blood of Jesus 
Christ." 

The Rev. Mr. Bailey, the English clergyman of Christ- 
church, New Zealand, says that the "priests of a certain 
order offer the sacrifice ; and such mysterious authority do 
they wield, that the real body and blood become infused into 
the bread and wine upon the altar." These are the teach- 
ings of the " Prayer-Book." At the words ; " This is my 



NEW ZEALAND. 47 

BODY, this is my blood," you must believe that the bread 
and wine become the real body and blood, with the soul and 
the Godhead, of Jesus Christ. . . . Except " ye eat my flesh, 
and diink my blood, there is no life in you." 'Mid gorgeous 
vestments, bursts of music, and clouds of incense curling 
above the altar, the priest asks the members of the church 
present to eat the miracle-made flesh, and drink the blood of 
Jesus the son of Joseph, called, in his time, Joshua the Gal- 
ilean. If this bread is made " flesh," as the clergy affirm, 
eating is cannibalism ! There arc few churchal practices 
more opposed to the genius of the nineteenth century, than 
these little select Sunday parties denominated the " Lord's 
Supper." Open wide your church-doors, O Christians! 
and spreading out, with liberal hands, good, coarse unleavened 
bread, fresh fruits, and pure cold water, invite in " the poor, 
the halt, and the blind ; " and then converse of the Naza- 
rene, his benevolence, his self-denial, his devotion to princi- 
ple, and his martyrdom upon Calvary ! 

THE MAOKI RACES. 

The original inhabitants of an island or country must nat- 
urally interest all thoughtful persons given to ethnological 
studies. According to Tasman, Cook, D'Surville, and other 
navigators, New Zealand, when discovered, was thickly 
inhabited by a most interesting people, — one hundred thou- 
sand or more in number. In color they were of a yellow 
brown or olive. Those that I have seen on camp-grounds, or 
strolling along the streets, were of a light copper hue. 
Blood, in many of them, is strangely mixed with that of 
Europeans. In hight they are above middle stature, erect, 
well proportioned, and muscular. Their countenances are 
open, eyes dark, foreheads finely developed, noses large, 
broad at the base, and often aquiline, and their hair black, 
waving, and often inclined to curl. Some of them have as 
fine, heavy beards as Americans. Their hair never falls off 
from their heads, but gradually turns gray. The old natives 



48 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

affirm that their ancestors lived to be very aged, and then 
died by slowly wasting away, as a lamp goes out for lack of 
oil. 

THEffi HOME MATTERS. 

These Maoris, as relics demonstrate, were certainly, in the 
past, more than semi-civilized. Those yet living are the 
degenerate specimens of a nobler ancestry. In social life 
they were industrious, good-natured, temperate, and cleanly. 
They dwelt together in large fenced villages. Rising early, 
the men went to their land-cultivations or sea-fishing:, and 
the women to cooking or basket-making. Their house- 
building, and architectural conceptions generally, were in- 
finitely superior to those of the Australian aborigines. They 
excelled in some few manufactures, especially in weaving 
mats and garments from phormium, — New-Zealand flax. 
This plant, growing spontaneous, reminds one of the wide 
green flag-leaves seen in American marshes. The fiber is 
wonderfully tough ; and the mats and rude dresses, made 
from it by the natives, were both useful and ornamental. 
This flax is now being utilized for the English market. 

Iron was unknown to the New-Zealanders when Capt. 
Cook landed upon the island. Their stone axes of various 
sizes, used for felling trees, were made of green jade, basalt, 
or hard gray stone. For water-vessels, they used the ripened 
rinds of gourds. Oil they kept in calabashes similar to those 
we saw in the Sandwich Islands. Their musical instru- 
ments, such as the flute, were made from human bones, or 
the hollow stems of wood. They did not buy and sell, but 
dealt in exchanges and gifts. Priests generally named the 
children. They practiced polygamy. As a religious animal, 
man is polygamic aud promiscuous; as a spiritual being, he 
is monogamic in marriage, and chaste in marital conduct ; and 
as an angel he is a celibate. The embryo angel is within. 
Men may become angelic on earth. This is the resurrection 
with God's " will done on earth as in heaven." 



NEW ZEALAND. 49 

The chiefs of these tribes were known by their tattooing, 
dress, insignia, and ornaments. The eldest child was the 
favorite one, ruling the others. A species of slavery existed 
among them. Slaves could never reach the rank of patri- 
cians. When these Maoris met, they did not shake hands, 
but affectionately rubbed their noses together. This is their 
present practice. While some American women carry 
poodles for pets, these natives carry little pigs. They are 
very hospitable to strangers. Cannibalism was unknown in 
their earlier traditionary times. Their decline commenced 
with the advent of the missionaries. The " Wanganui Her- 
ald," in an able editorial upon the " decline of the native 
race," says, — 

" Let one get into conversation with any of the old settlers, principally 
whalers, whose recollections date back some forty years, and he will be 
astonished to learn how these tribes have disappeared off the face of the 
earth, and how the present representatives of these departed races, 
noble specimens of civilized savages as some of them are, bear compar- 
ison in stature, appearance, mental qualifications, or social influence 
among their respective tribes, with their departed ancestors. It is almost 
saddening to watch the gradual though certain diminution among those 
once powerful hapus ; and it is no less humiliating to have to acknowl- 
edge, that, in the majority of instances, death and disease can be uner- 
ringly traced to their intercourse with the less civilized pakelia, the white 
man. In Otaki, the centre of missionary influence on this part of the 
coast, will be found the greatest immorality, the most degraded mental 
and physical condition, and consequently the most rapid and certain 
decline, among the natives as a people. . . . Yearly statistics unerringly 
state, that, so far from the natives being benefited by their religious, 
political, and social intercourse with ourselves, the reverse is the case. 
Disease and death are on the increase ; and crimes, often of a heinous 
nature, are committed more frequently in proportion to the progress of 
their acquaintance with our manners and our customs, our habits and 
our views, our treachery and our falsehood. This seems an appalling 
picture, but nevertheless it is a true bill." 

TATTOOLNG. 

The term " tattoo," of Oceanic origin, relates to those 
indelible devices pricked into the skins of natives. The 



50 AROUND THE WORLD. 

New-Zealanders used originally the wing-bone of a bird, 
sharpened to a point. This they dip into the juice of a tree, 
producing the desired color. The tattoo-artists hold a high 
social position. The process is painful and tedious. Chiefs 
are very thoroughly as well as weirdly tattooed. Besides 
being ornamental, the operation is regarded with religious 
veneration ; the one thus decorated being placed under the 
protecting care of some spirit. The god of the tattoo is 
called Tiki. The practice is ancient. Herodotus informs us 
that " both in Thrace and Lybia the natives were accus- 
tomed to puncture and color their faces, and various parts of 
their bodies." 

WHENCE CAME THESE MAORIS? 

The native population may be classed into several divis- 
ions, distinguishable by peculiarities of dialect, physiognomy, 
and disposition. These divisions are dimly traceable to the 
crews of different canoes finding their way to these islands. 
Evidently they came from different Polynesian groups. 
They certainly did not come from Australia, as their color, 
habits, religion, and language demonstrate ; neither are they 
the descendants of the Sandwich Islanders, as some have 
contended. Among substantial reasons to the contrary, the 
following may be mentioned : The New-Zealanders carry 
their burdens on their backs, much like our North-Amer- 
ican Indians ; while the Sandwich-Islanders carry theirs on 
a balance-pole, something like the Chinese. Further, these 
New-Zealand Maoris have no words for swearing, no tem- 
ples for religious worship, no idols, no refuge-cities ; nor did 
they ever practice circumcision. Many of their taboos, tabu, 
were utterly unlike those of the Hawaiians. But, affirma- 
tively, the carvings of the Maoris agree wonderfully with 
those of the ancient inhabitants of Central America. Like 
those Central- Americans, these aborigines obtain fire by fric- 
tion ; they steep kernels of Karaka for food ; and have reli- 
gious as well as many other customs resembling those remote 



NEW ZEALAND. 51 

nations, as late discoveries at Uxmel and Palenque plainlj 
show. 

THE MAORIS' RELIGION. 

Men, civilized and savage alike, are naturally religious. 
The principle is God-implanted. These New-Zealand Ma- 
oris believed in a plurality of invisible gods, and a future 
existence, although the tapu took the place of religious 
observances. They had priests and " sorcerers," and held in- 
tercourse with their "ancestral dead." They were troubled 
with demons. The heads of the chiefs were tabooed (tapu), 
no one being allowed to touch them, or hardly allude to them, 
under fearful penalties. They believed in charms, and wore 
them. Death, to them, was the passage to the Reinga, the 
unseen world, or the place of departed spirits. They prayed 
to their gods for aid and direction. They did not fear to 
die, yet preferred living in their mortal bodies. They 
believed that individuals occupied different apartments in 
Reinga, according as their earthly lives had been good or ill. 
Messages were frequently given to dying persons to bear 
away to deceased relatives in this shadow-land of souls. All 
of their funeral wails over their recent dead ended with, 
" Go, go, dear one, away to thy people ! " It is a singular 
coincidence that the Fijians, Tahitians, Tongans, and Sa- 
moans, as well as the New-Zealanders, considered the place 
of departure of the spirits, on their journey to the unseen 
world, as the western extremities of their islands. 

Burning Kauri gum for a kind of incense at funerals and 
festivals, they considered the trees pointing skyward as sym- 
bolizing life in a higher, better state of existence. This res- 
inous substance, Kauri, — imported for making varnish, — is 
not obtained in the present living Kauri pine-forests, but only 
in the Auckland province of the north island, where such 
trees originally grew ; yet of such ancient forests no other 
trac3 remains than the resin now found deep in the soil. 



52 AROUND THE WORLD. 

MAORI SPIRITUALISM. 

Relation to, and communion with, a world of spirits are 
beliefs almost, if not completely universal. The native tribes 
and clans of these islands are not only aware of holding 
intercourse with the so-called dead, but they understand the 
abuse, often using their mecliumistic privileges for selfish 
ends. During their wars with the English, they were uni- 
formly made acquainted by vision, clairvoyance, or clairaudi- 
ence, with the movements of the British troops, before action 
in battle. Not a plan of her Majesty's officers could be 
kept from them. The leading chief of the San Sans was 
a noted medium and medicine-man. He distinctly said that 
the " spirits of the dead " guided him to his victories. The 
Maoris in the north island still own much territory, have 
their king, believe in communicating spirit intelligences, and 
hold but little intercourse with pakeha, the white man. 

The medium-priest in a tribe is called Tohunga. They 
meet in close apartments, and chant their songs till the flick- 
ering fire fades away, when the Tohunc/a goes into his ecstatic 
state, and the spirit controlling tenders counsel, describes his 
new habitation in spirit-life, gives the names of those whom 
he has met, and bears messages in return to kindred in the 
higher life. That these Maoris of New Zealand talk with 
immortals, no intelligent man having lived among them dis- 
putes. Are they Spiritualists, then, or Spiritists ? Spiritual- 
ism is the synonym of the harmonial philosophy. Spiritism 
is the bare fact of spirit-converse. 

TOHUNGA, AND VOICES OE THE DEAD. 

The racy writer of " Old New Zealand," * treating of 
spiritual experiences among the Maoris, says in substance, 
" A popular young chief, something of a scholar, and regis- 
ter of births and deaths, had been killed in battle ; and, at 
the request of friends, the Tohunga had promised to evoke, 

* Old New Zealand, by the Pakelia, p. 157-16L 



NEW ZEALAND. 53 

on a certain night, his spirit. The appointed time came. 
Fires were lit. The Tohunga repaired to the darkest corner 
of the room. All was silence, save the sobbing of the sisters 
of the deceased warrior- chief. There were thirty of us, sit- 
ting on the rush-strewn floor, the door shut, and the fire now 
burning down to embers. Suddenly there came a voice out 
from the partial darkness, ' Salutation, salutation to my 
family, to my tribe, to you, pakeha, my friend!' Our feel- 
ings were taken by storm. The oldest sister screamed, and 
rushed with extended arms in the direction from whence the 
voice came. Her brother, seizing, restrained her by main 
force. Others exclaimed, ' Is it you ? is it you ? truly it is 
you ! aue ! aue ! ' and fell quite insensible upon the floor. 
The older women, and some of the aged men, were not moved 
in the slightest degree, though believing it to be the spirit 
of the chief. 

" Reflecting upon the novelty of the scene, the ' darkness 
visible,' and the deep interest manifest, the spirit spoke 
again, ' Speak to me, my family ; speak to me, my tribe ; 
speak to me, the pakeha ! ' At last the silence gave way, 
and the brother spoke : ' How is it with you ? is it well 
with you in that country ? ' The answer came, though not 
in the voice of the Tohunga-medium, but in strange, sep- 
ulchral sounds : " It is icell with me : my 'place is a good 
place. I have seen our friends : they are all with me ! " A 
woman from another part of the room now anxiously cried 
out, ' Have you seen my sister ? ' — ' Yes, I have seen her : she 
is happy in oar beautiful country.' — 'Tell her my love so 
great for her will never cease.' — ' Yes, I will bear the mes- 
sage.' Here the native woman burst into tears, and my 
own bosom swelled in sympathy. 

" The spirit speaking again, giving directions about property 
and keepsakes, I thought I would more thoroughly test the 
genuineness of all this ; and I said, ' "We can not find your 
book with the registered names ; where have you concealed 
it ? ' The answer came instantly, ' I concealed it between the 



54 AROUND THE WORLD. 

tahuhu of my house, and the thatch ; straight over you, as 
you go in at the door.' The brother rushed out to see. All 
was silence. In five minutes he came hurriedly back, with 
the book in his hand ! It astonished me. 

" It was now late ; and the spirit suddenly said, ' Fare- 
well, my family, farewell, my tribe : I go.'' Those present 
breathed an impressive farewell ; when the spirit cried out 
again, from high in the air, ' Farewell ! ' 

" This, though seemingly tragical, is in every respect liter- 
ally true. But what was it ? ventriloquism, the Devil, or 
what?" 

This last paragraph is simply a sop thrown out to please 
the orthodox. It might be paralleled thus : Peter, James, 
and John heard the spirits of Moses and Elias " talking with 
Jesus" upon the Mount of Transfiguration. " But what was 
it ? — ventriloquism, the Devil, or what ? " 

Spiritualism is as common in the isles of the ocean to-day 
as it was in Palestine when the Nazarene there lived, eigh- 
teen centuries since. Dillon, commanding the East India 
Company's surveying ship " Research," visited the island of 
Vanikovo,— lat. 11° 40' south, long. 166° 40' east, — for the 
purpose of inquiring into the fate of the French expedition 
under La Pe"rouse. At this island Dillon tells us there were 
large houses set apart for the use of disembodied spirits. 
Markham, in " The Cruise of ' The Rosario ' in the South 
Seas in 1871," refers to the fact as related by Dillon. 

The New Zealand mind is naturally skeptical ; and some 
of the Spiritualists tread upon the very border-lands of ma- 
terialism. As did the ancient Jews, they continually ask for 
a " sign " — some astounding spiritual wonder. Many new- 
fledged Spiritualists prefer a combative, frisky sensationalism 
to the historic, philosophic, and pathetic style of lectures. 
The two methods of public utterance are the solid and the 
sensational : the one is enduring, the other ephemeral. 
Straws flash and flame ; but the clear, glistening anthracite 
warms the apartment, and gives permanent comfort. 



NEW ZEALAND. 55 

NEW ZEALAND'S PROSPERITY. 

While India suffering from the plague and famine was the 
poorest country I saw during my third tour around the 
world, New Zealand was the most prosperous, and among 
the reasons are the following : 

The government controls the post-offices and the post- 
office savings bank. Postage is cheap. The government 
also owns and manages the telegraph system ; and a ten-word, 
message anywhere upon the islands costs but a sixpence. 

The government owns and operates the telephone system 
which is excellent, and the charges are more than one-third 
less than they are in America. 

The government gives State or mutual life insurance, 
and the premium rates are considerably lower than the 
average rates charged by the private companies. Accord- 
ingly, every government policy-holder feels that he has the 
whole country as a guarantee behind him. 

Eight hours constitute a legal day's work. The schools are 
free. The government has expended nearly 12,000,000 in 
establishing special and technical schools. 

The government has established a government bank, thus 
making deposits safe as the government itself. Victoria and 
South Australia have done the same. 

The law imposes a tax upon incomes, and an ordinary tax 
upon land and mortgages, the amount of which is fixed 
annually by a " rating act," and also an additional graduated 
tax upon the unimproved value of land held in large blocks 
or tracts. 

The government, through parliamentary law, administers 
and is responsible for all estates, thus insuring justice and 
safety to the widow and the orphan. 

The government owns and operates the railroads, and the 
passenger and freight rates are such as give about three and 
one-half per cent, interest on the capital invested. Traveling 
railroad rates are considerably less than in my native country. 



56 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

Conciliatory boards have been established by the govern- 
ment in every city and town where disputes are likely to 
arise between labor and capital. Each board is comprised of 
three representative business men of capital and three repre- 
sentatives from the labor organizations and the district judge 
— a veritable board of equity ; hence a strike is next to im- 
possible in New Zealand. 

New Zealand has also woman's suffrage. Bishop Cowie 
of these islands, my traveling companion by steamer from 
Auckland to Sydney, was a devoted advocate of extending 
full and free suffrage to women. " It had already," he said, 
" raised the standard of politics, and elected a higher class of 
officials." Those who most violently opposed the woman's 
suffrage movement were gamblers, liquor dealers, and the 
men that owned or patronized houses of ill-fame. Our 
sainted mothers, wives, sisters, daughters — in a word, women, 
being the subjects of law, and punishable if violating law, it 
is but the simplest act of justice that they have a direct 
voice in the making of law. 

We had the pleasure of meeting in London one of New 
Zealand's most worthy citizens, the Hon. Mr. McLean, ex- 
member of Parliament. A gentlemen by nature, he is a 
stanch Spiritualist in theory and practice. Pleasant are our 
many memories of him. Our friend of old sunny recollections 
in Dunedin, Robert Stout, the erudite lawyer, is now Sir 
Robert Stout, a member of Parliament, residing in Welling- 
ton. Whatever position he may occupy relative to either 
religious or political measures, he is not, neither can he be, a 
bigot. And, further, he is honest and conscientious. Parlia- 
ments and Congresses need just such statesmen as McLean and 
Stout. 



CHAPTER VII. 

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 

" But all through life I see a cross ; 
There is no gain except by loss, 
There is no. life except by death, 
There is no vision but by faith, 
Nor glory but by bearing shame 
Nor justice but by taking blame — 
So, the Eternal Father saith. ' 

Locked up in a floating prison a month or more over 
10,000 miles of sea, it was refreshing to reach Sydney, noted 
for its handsome harbor, magnificent scenery, parks, recrea- 
tion grounds and gardens dotted with plants and flowers 
from every known part of the world. 

At the steamer's landing I was met by several friends. 
The welcome was most cordial. Several of their faces were 
familiar, and their hands just as friendly as when a score of 
years previous I was lecturing for them upon the phenomena 
and philosophy of Spiritualism. 

Disorganized as the Spiritualists of the city are they gave 
me a most hearty public reception. The hall was filled to 
overflowing ; but before the exercises ended the demon of 
discord stepped in, and a number of supposed Spiritualists 
proved themselves to be only spiritists devoid of that for- 
giveness, that charity, that fraternity and that tender sympa- 
thy and forbearance that become those who have drank from 
the fountain of angel communion ; for many Spiritists are 
quite as human as the orthodox that they condemn. 



58 



AROUND THE WORLD. 



Preferring the solid land to water, I journeyed by railway 
from Sydney to Melbourne ; observing, as I dashed along, a. 
very superior country for grazing, for farming, as well as vast 
forests of eucalyptus trees. This is a sort of a national tree, 
tall, unique, medical. New South Wales is free trade ; Vic- 
toria is tariff, and so my luggage had to be overhauled and 
examined at the dividing-line between these two non-feder- 
ated provinces. 

REACHING MELBOURNE. 

Sunny was the morning that I reached this stirring, bus- 
tling business city. Mr. W. H. Terry, upon whose forehead 




W. H. Terry. 



the angels wrote long ago in letters of gold the word " faith- 
ful," was at the station to meet me. I was soon taken to 
his country residence, surrounded by fruit-trees, waving 
pines, ornamental shrubbery and a great variety of flowers. 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 59 

It is several miles out, but of easy access by railway to the 
city. 

Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, and the finest city in 
the Southern Hemisphere, has a population approaching five 
hundred thousand. It stretches along, dotting and fringing 
both banks of the Yarra to within a few miles of its mouth. 
Though quite English in architectural appearance, Mel- 
bourne, considering its age, is a most magnificent city. Its 
climate and geographical situation, as well as its extensive 
suburban parks, lawns and gardens, can elicit only profuse 
praise and commendation from travelers. 

CHANGING WITH THE PASSING TEARS. 

What changes ! was my common exclamation? There 
had been so many changes in the city since my first visit to 
the city, and for the better, that I hardly knew some portions 
of it. The then suburban fields are now studded with neat 
cottages — the buildings in some localities have grown up 
more towering — the tramways now dash along the streets, 
and thrift marks lawn, garden and grove. 

The principal streets are wide, well-paved, and brilliantly 
lighted in evening- time with gas. Along the curb-stones, in 
some of the streets, run rippling streams of pure water. 
There is no doubt of its being a decidedly healthy city. 
Epidemics are almost unknown. It is said that the first case 
of hydrophobia has yet to occur. Could dogs, pleading, ask 
for a healthier, better paradise ? Nothing surprises me so 
much in this country as the museums, fine public libraries, 
and free reading-rooms. The city library contains over five 
hundred and fifty thousand volumes. Others, connected 
with the university, or other public institutions, are nearly 
as large, and accessible daily, free of charge. This is a 
blessing to the poor. The parliament " Education Bill," 
making education secular and compulsory, was bitterly 
opposed a few years ago by bishops, priests, and aristo- 
crats.. This was to have been expected. The priesthood in all 



60 AROUND THE WORLD. 

lands aims to keep the people in ignorance, or to so monopo- 
lize their education as to turn it into sectarian channels. Edu- 
cation is the key-word of the age. Schools should he free, and 
education compulsory, under all skies. In the ratio that men- 
tal and moral instruction is enforced, crime diminishes. To 
this end Barlow says, " It may be safely pronounced that a 
State has no right to punish a man to whom it has given no 
previous instruction. ." Sir Thomas More writes to this effect 
in his " Utopia " : " If you suffer your people to be ill-edu- 
cated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, 
and then punish them for those crimes to which their first 
education disposes them, what else is to be concluded from 
this but that you make thieves, and then punish them ? " 

PARKS AND FLOWER GARDENS. 

If flowers are the alphabets of angels, gardens are the 
delight of gods and good men. The Melbourne Botanic 
Gardens, beautifully situated on the south bank of the flow- 
ing Yarra, some half a mile from the city, cover an area of a 
hundred and fourteen acres, and abound in almost an innu- 
merable number of trees, shrubs, plants, and ornamental flow- 
ers, snowy, crimson, and golden. The palms and ferns are 
exceedingly fine ; and the deep emerald of the tropical foli- 
age is, on this January day, absolutely magnificent. 

The city and suburbs comprise in the aggregate not less 
than three thousand five hundred acres. These reserves are 
not mere enclosures, but most of them are laid out, planted, 
and ornamented in the most approved style. 

The eucalyptus abounds everywhere. It is said there are 
some fifty species, the wood being excellent for ship-building 
and railroad-ties. The foliage is beautiful ; some are clothed 
in beautiful blossoms and the leaves are said to have a thera- 
peutic value. These eucalyptus back in the gullies and 
mountains rival, if not excel, the renowned forest-giants of 
California. Through the kindness and financial courtesy of 
Vice-Consul Stanford, brother of the late Senator Stanford of 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 61 

California, I journeyed with Mr. Ross up among the eucalyp- 
tus forests and fern gullies of the mountains. The accommo- 
dations were excellent, the scenery indescribably grand, and 
the whole trip was sure to linger in the memory. Mr. 
Klein measuring a eucalyptus on the Black Spur, found it 
four hundred and eighty feet high. The minster spire of 
Strasbourg has been pronounced the highest of any cathedral 
on the globe, sending its pinnacle to the height of four hun- 
dred and sixty-six feet ; the great Pyramid of Cheops is four 
hundred and eighty feet in height ; and yet these eucalyptus 
trees would completely overshadow spire and pyramid. 

AMUSEMENTS AND MORALS. 

Cricket, football, shooting, bay-fishing and boating on the 
Yarra have their daily devotees. Holidays are frequent. 
At these seasons, arcades, stores, offices are closed, business 
put aside, and the old become young again. Horse-racing in 
Melbourne has become a craze. Somewhere in the vicinity 
of the city there is a horse-race every day of the week except 
Sunday. I wonder what race-horses themselves think of the 
business. 

Amusements at proper seasons and places are both right 
and pleasing. It is well for even the old to unbend, doff 
their dignity at times and be boys again. It smooths away 
the wrinkles, sets the blood to bounding and relieves the 
mind of cankering cares. But amusements should be harm- 
less. They should be strengthening to the muscular system 
and exhilarating to the mind. There is everywhere in social 
life the sunny side and the shady side. That only is sin that 
injures. The long, sanctimonious face is a certain symbol of 
hypocrisy, and prudish social sin-hunters see in others what 
is most prominent, though veiled, in themselves. Morality 
is based upon justice and right — and right is that which 
benefits self and others. 

The causes of a morally cancerous condition of society in 
Melbourne or any other city is largely owing to the preva- 



62 AROUND THE WORLD. 

lence, and practical influences of Orthodox theology. If 
these sinning parties believed in the certainty of retribution, 
and the abiding presence of ministering spirits, they would 
immediately turn from the error of their ways. In Spirit- 
ulism, as a Christ-baptism, is the world's hope. 

AUSTRALIA CLIMATE. 

Pale and low in the south-west of clear New England 
skies swings the sun these wintry days of January. Here, 
in Victoria, it is nearly vertical, and the heat quite oppressive ; 
while the maddened dust-clouds that whirl and waltz along 
the streets of Melbourne are fearful to encounter. The 
interior of Australia is pronounced largely a desert. The 
rains extend back only some forty or fifty miles from the 
coast. When it rains in these regions it pours. 

Considering the latitude and marine position, Victoria can 
but enjoy a climate quite genial to Europeans and Americans. 
Approximating the trophical, it constantly reminds me of 
New Orleans, and the Gulf States generally. The weather 
is excessively warm only during the prevalence of the hot 
northerly winds. They are something like the California 
winds in the valleys of the interior, only more scorchingiy 
withering. The hottest of all the months is January, the 
coldest, July. A thin ice, and occasionally frosts, are seen 
during the winter months June, July, and August. These 
frosts vary in different portions of the country, depending 
upon the elevation above the level of the sea. The haying 
season is over in January, immediately after which the 
farmers commence harvesting their wheat. Quite a number 
of Americans have become permanent residents in Melbourne. 

A BROAD AUSTRALIAN OUTLOOK. 

Though an immense island, Australia may reasonably be 
considered a continent. It length, from east to west, is over 
two thousand five hundred miles, and its breadth nearly two 
thousand ; the northern part, approaching the equator, being 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 63 

about four thousand miles to the south-east of India, and 
four thousand to the south of China. It is estimated to 
contain three million square miles ; fifty times the size of 
England, and one hundred that of Scotland. It is divided 
into Victoria, — Melbourne, the capital ; New South Wales, 
Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. 
Each of these colonies is governed by councils, — legislative 
bodies something like the houses of Parliament, — under the 
superintendence of a governor appointed by the Queen of 
England. Victoria has an area of 86,831 square miles. It 
is very nearly as large as all of Great Britain, exclusive of 
her islands in the sea. A chain of hills traverses «the whole 
colony, called the Dividing Range. The snowy Alps form 
the boundary between Victoria and New South Wales. 
They range from five thousand to six thousand feet above 
the level of the sea. The rivers of Victoria are neither 
serviceable for steamers nor magnificent in appearance. 
Many of them dry up during the summer months. To this 
the Yarra, on the banks of which the metropolis is situated, 
is an exception. The country back in the distance contains 
numerous salt and fresh water lakes and lagoons. They are 
generall}' shallow, except when happening to be the craters 
of extinct volcanoes. 

The country is subject to great droughts. Irrigation is 
required to make the country blossom as the rose. 

RECEPTION AND LECTURE-WORK. 

Soon after my arrival, the Victorian Association of Spirit- 
ualists, of which Mr. Terry is President, gave me a most cor- 
dial reception. The room was filled to its utmost capacity. 
There were present such old pioneers as Ross, Mcllwraith, 
Terry, Carson and others that greeted me on my first visit to 
this country. The world needed and still needs such moral 
heroes. After the music, the speeches and responses, tea 
was served with choicest foods and fruits — a most enjoyable 
occasion. 



64 AROUND THE WORLD. 



THE PROGRESSIVE LYCEUM. 



A few days later the Children's Progressive Lyceum, 
under the conductorship of Mr. Elliot, gave me a reception 
all afire with enthusiasm. The music, the gymnastic exer- 
cises, the recitations and the addresses were most interesting 
— an evening never to be forgotten ! 

It was on my first tour to this country that I aided in 
organizing this Lyceum and be it said in praise its flags have 
never ceased to float nor has its light been dimmed or gone 
out in indifference. The Lyceum is a royal institute for the 
young. 

Children are comparable to sensitive buds and blossoms. 
Their minds are something like sheets of white paper await- 
ing impressions ; hence it is morally cruel to send them to 
sectarian Sunday-schools to be taught theological dogmas 
that may blight their normal aspirations, or drive them into 
the maddening whirlpools of insanity or atheism. The Mel- 
bourne Lyceum is doing most excellent work. Mr. George 
Spriggs, so well and so favorably known for his mediumistic 
gifts in both England and Australia, is now conductor. 

THE HEAD-CENTEE. 

A circumference necessarily implies a center ; and the 
objective head-center of Spiritualism in Australia is in the 
" Harbinger of Light " and bookstore office, Austral Build- 
ing, Collins Street, Melbourne. 

It was as early as 1861 that Mr. Terry began to investigate 
the Spiritual phenomena. Tests unexpected and convincing 
were received. Evidences accumulating from time, he was 
mentally forced to believe that the dark gulf had been 
spanned, the Lethean River between the two worlds 
bridged, and that though a man die, he dies to live again, 
and is capable of demonstrating his future existence. Oh, 
grand fact, blessed truth ! Now, hope and belief become 
knowledge — and faith fruition. Mr. Terry walked in new- 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 65 

ness of life — a life meaning immortality. Soon becoming 
mediumistic, he developed fine healing gifts. Diagnosing 
impressionally, he still treats the sick, using botanic remedies 
which he imports from Boston. He uses no poisonous, dras- 
tic drugs. 

The " Glow- Worm," conducted by the venerable Mr. Nay- 
lor, was at an early date succeeded by the " Harbinger of 
Light," owned and ably edited by its present proprietor, and 
which, by the way, was, and continues to be, one of the most 
excellent and scholarly journals published in defence of Spir- 
itualism. Among its corps of contributors is James Smith, 
whose cultured essays, articles and critical reviews long 
graced the columns of the Melbourne " Daily Argus." The 
writings of John Ross and Mr. Wilton conspire to make the 
" Harbinger " an honor to the cause it represents. 



MEDIUMS IN AUSTRALIA — GEORGE SPRIGGS. 

" for the touch of a vanished hand, 
Or a sound of the voice that is still ! " 

Multitudes in all ages re-echoed these words. Human life 
is brief — the future endless ! And which is it to be, a dream- 
less annihilation, or a conscious, progressive existence in a 
better, higher land of immortality ? How are definite an- 
swers to these all-important inquiries to be obtained ? — An- 
swer — through mediUmship, and mediumship only ! These 
psychic sensitives alone can roll the stone away from the 
mouth of the sepulchre. 

A writer in the Melbourne " Daily Herald " said there 
were five hundred mediums in the city. This was as right- 
fully as seriously questioned. It was my privilege, however, 
to meet several, and among them Mr. George Spriggs, with 
whom I was privileged to have regular sittings each week, 
witnessing the trance, and listening to the independent, clear- 
ringing voice of the Indian Skiwauki. I was acquainted 



66 AROUND THE WORLD. 

with Mr. Spriggs' honorable record in England before meet- 
ing him in Australia. 

It was in Cardiff, England, that this gentleman began his 
sittings for mediumistic development. And they were not in 
vain, as the future revealed. Much of his original success 
must be credited first to the guardian influences of wise 
spirits, seconded by the rigid discipline of Mr. Rees Lewis, 
a solid, substantial, old-time Spiritualist. His conditions, 
seemingly severe, were sustained by the controlling intelli- 
gences. All the members of this seance were compelled to 
strictly abstain not only from wine and from beer, but from 
all liquors, all tobacco, and all animal food. They were to 
be, and were during the period of all their sittings, straight- 
out vegetarians. And upon seance days they were required 
to fast from after breakfast till after the evening's stance. 
And, further, frequent bathing and cleanliness were de- 
manded. Each person was required to take a bath before 
going into the stance room. These regulations and condi- 
tions were prescribed by the spirits themselves ; and they 
were as rigid as they were righteous. These conditions being 
complied with, in connection with calm, aspirational and rev- 
erential minds,, the finest, perhaps the grandest, manifesta- 
tions were obtained that have gladdened the earth during 
this century. The materialization of spirits was seemingly 
perfect, and other phases of manifestations were equally won- 
derful. 

Upright in his daily walk, and conscientious, never did the 
breath of scandal or fraud or trickery touch Mr. Spriggs' 
garments. He ever considered mediumship sacred ; and felt 
that its instruments should be consecrated to the upbuilding 
of the good and. the true. 

The above conditions instituted by Mr. Lewis were not un- 
like those of the old prophet Daniel before one of his great 
visions. These were his words : " I ate no pleasant bread, 
neither came there flesh nor wine into my mouth " ; and he 
"fasted for three full weeks." 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 67" 

How many seances are held in ill-ventilated rooms, by- 
people with unbathed bodies, swine-stuffed stomachs, beer- 
soaked visceras, and tobacco-scented breaths — a very pool- 
room of physical and moral stench; and, then, ask the beau- 
tiful angels to come with loving messages. Heavens ! Why, 
you give just the conditions for demons to come — demons 
and pretentious spirits, with lying lips and great swelling 
words of flattery. Such seances are the hotbeds and nurseries 
of obsession. 

A stance room should be a consecrated room, and those 
entering should be clean and sweet, calm and spiritually- 
minded — consecrated to a conscientious search for that truth 
and wisdom which cometh down from above. It is with these 
conditions only that the best results can be secured. If we 
would have our loved in heaven — if we would have angels in 
all their spotless brightness and loveliness come into our con- 
scious presence, we must give them the loveliest and purest 
conditions possible. 

" How pure in heart, and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold 
Should he the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead." 

The Cardiff " Circle of Light," with which Mr. Spriggs 
was connected as medium, became in England historic ; and 
the similar manifestations through him in Melbourne will not 
be forgotten by those who witnessed them. But the mate- 
rializing phase of mediumship drew so much vital substance 
from his organization that he abandoned it for the impres- 
sional, for the trance and for diagnosing and prescribing for 
the sick. In this he is eminently successful. Occasionally he 
gives old-time sittings, to special friends. Upon one of these 
most interesting occasions, the light in the room slightly sub- 
dued, I heard the independent voices of Ski, Stainton Moses, 
Frederic W. Evans, the Shaker elder ; all as natural as 
though in their own mortal bodies. Surely Spiritualism is 



68 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the light not alone of America, Europe and Australia, but of 
the world. 

THE MASONIC HALL MEETINGS. 

" And as ye go, teach ! " was the ancient command. Our 
public meetings in Masonic Hall under the auspices of the 
Victorian Association of Spiritualists, Mr. Terry, the presi- 
dent, proved a very great success. The audiences were over- 
flowingly large and exceptionally quiet and receptive. Evi- 
dently the people were hungering for the truth. Sectarian 
creeds no longer satisfy the souls of thinkers. Manna may 
have fattened the Israelites ; Nebuchadnezzar may have 
feasted upon grass, and Calvinists upon the fiery confessions 
of the murderer of Servetus ; but those babyhood periods are 
past. The present clamors for living bread — for science, for 
a rational religion and for demonstrations of immortality. 

The music at these meetings, vocal and instrumental, was 
most excellent. At the conclusion of each lecture the oppor- 
tunity was given for asking questions, some of which if not 
knotty were amusing. My lectures, too, in the Lyceum Hall 
in the Unitarian pulpit and in the hall of the Australian 
Presbyterian Church and the Church of our Father were all 
equally well attended ; and be it said in praise of the press 
it reported me fairly ; especially was this true of the " Daily 
Herald." 

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC SENTIMENT. 

Absolute retrogradation is as impossible as for the sun to 
rise and set. The setting is in the seeming. No truth ever 
dies. The prodigal son of the parable, though wandering 
from home temporarily, was wandering into such retributive 
experiences of hunger and raggedness as would enable him 
to the better appreciate the comforts and happiness of a lov- 
ing father's home. Upward all things — all true things tend. 
The progress of Spiritualism in Australia is not so vividly 
manifest in the addition of newly-organized societies and 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 69 

Lyceums, as in the increasing liberality of opinion and breadth 
of thought. Spiritualism made the Rev. Mr. Strong's church 
possible. Spiritualism is a divine force — a diffusive power, 
crushing creeds and leavening the whole theological lump. 
Spiritualism and primitive Christianity with its visions, 
trances, healings and gift of tongues are in perfect accord. 

The progress of liberalism and Spiritualism were especially 
noticeable in the general tone of the city press, which was 
courteous and fraternal, presenting a most marked contrast 
with that of my first visit. As a matter of history I repub- 
lish the two succeeding paragraphs from the " Daily Tele- 
graph " — organ of the clergy, and theological kin to the 
clergy of the past, whose hands closed dungeon doors, whose 
lily-white fingers tightened the thumb-screws, whose voices 
kindled the fires of martyrdom, and whose churchal tongues 
delighted to lap the blood of heretics — and all, all for 
Jesus' sake ! 

But here are the paragraphs appearing in the " Telegraph " 
nearly a quarter of a century since. 

"If the 'Seer of the Ages' get your length in earth-life, you had 
hetter treat him well ; for I can assure you, you will seldom find his equal. 
If his spirit should get the length of ' Arabula ' before his body reaches 
N. Z., — I don't know the latitude of this place, viz., ' Arabula,' bat I refer 
you for information to ' The Arabian Nights,' you should get his hide stuffed, 
and preserve him to posterity ; the ' ages ' I fear, shall nevermore look on 
his like again. I cannot better begin to describe him than by giving a few 
of the delicate epithets bestowed on this Mr. Peebles in all the newspapers, 
town and country : an ' impudent American,' an ' impious pretender,' a 
'long-haired apostate,' a ' specious humbug,' a ' rabid lunatic,' an 'uncouth 
revivalist,' a ' vulgar blasphemer,' a ' long-haired apostate ! ' These figures 
of speech might be indefinitely multiplied, and yet half the truth would not 
be told. This 'great and good man ' (Peebles) in speaking works himself 
up to a frenzy, while with bloodshot eyes, and rolling tongue, and foaming 
mouth, he tells the opinion that some ' heathen Chinee ' had formed of 
Christianity away somewhere in the Far West. He then maudles over a 
Yankee story about some poor youth mourning for his granny, whom he 
had never seen, and who came from ' Arabula,' to pat him on the head. 
. . . On every occasion of his public appearance, the same hysterical 



TO AROUND THE WORLD. 

females, the same half-crazed, wild-looking men, are to be seen ready to 
swallow any thing and every thing ; the more absurd the better. They cry, 
* The new and beautiful faith I ' ' There is no God, but Peebles is a 
prophet.' " 

The distinguished late William Howitt, Spiritualist and 
author, it is said, of seventy volumes, never wrote a pithier 
paragraph than this : — 

" Many persons who have attended Spiritual seances of various kinds, 
and satisfied themselves of their reality, express their surprise that the 
press, as a body, remain doggedly unconvinced. Why should they be sur- 
prised? It is simply an affair of Hodge's razors. Journals, whether of 
news or literature, like those celebrated razors, are made to sell. So long 
as the press thinks it will pay better to abuse Spiritism than to profess it, it 
will continue to do so ; but should the writers for the press hear to-day, or 
any day, that the public is gone over to Spiritism, they will, all to a man, be 
zealous Spiritists the next morning. Then, and not a day earlier, nor a day 
later, will the press be convinced. Their logic all lies in the three cele- 
brated words, pounds, shillings, pence." 

CHRISTIANITY AND BIGOTRY. 

Bigotry has no head and cannot think, no heart and can- 
not feel. Her prayers are curses, her communion is death. 
Before me lies an evangelical work with the following title : 
" A Declaration for Maintaining the True Faith, held by all 
Christians, concerning the Trinity of Persons in one only 
God, by John Calvin, against the Detestable Errors of 
Michael Servetus, a Spaniard ; in which it is also proved 
that it is lawful to punish Heretics, as this Wretch was justly 
executed in the City of G-eneva. Printed at Geneva, 1554." 
In a letter dated February, 1546, Calvin says, " If Servetus 
come to Geneva, I will exereise my authority in such a man- 
ner as not to allow him to depart alive." In another of 
Sept. 30, 1561, he writes, " Do not fail to rid the country of 
such zealous scoundrels, who stir up the people to revolt 
against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I 
have exterminated Michael Servetus, the Spaniard." This 
is the real genius of Evangelical Christianity in Melbourne. 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 71 

THE SPIRIT OF THE CHURCH. 

Read the history of Queen Elizabeth. Study the horrible 
secrets of that English Inquisition known as the High Com- 
mission Court and the Star Chamber. Through it heretics 
and scholarly free-thinkers were brought to the block. In 
after years John Bunyan was imprisoned, George Fox hunted 
and vilified, and Ann Lee banished. Persecutions, fetters, 
dungeons, fires, swords and inhuman butcheries have ever 
been the attendants of Christianity. And, what is more, 
these red-handed Christians have justified their murderous 
proceedings by quoting the commands of Scripture, " If thy 
brother, thy son, or the wife of thy bosom . . . say, Let us 
go and serve other gods, . . . thou shalt surely kill him . 
. . . thou shalt stone him with stones that he die " (Deut. 
xiii. 6, 10). 

" If any man or woman be a wizard or witch, that is, con- 
sult ' familiar spirits,' they shall surely be put to death " 
(Exod. xxii. 18; Lev. xx. 27). 

" If any child or children, above sixteen years old, and of 
sufficient understanding, shall curse or smite their natural 
father or mother, he or they shall be put to death " (Exod. 
xxi. 15, 17; Lev. xx.). Also, "A stubborn and rebellious 
son, above sixteen years of age, which will not obey the 
voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, . . . such son 
shall be put to death" (Deut. xxi. 18, 21). 

That reigning Protestant Christian, Henry VIII., issued, 
in harmony with Bible commands, this edict : — 

"If any person, by word, writing, &c, do preach, teach, or hold opin- 
ions, that in the blessed sacrament of the altar, under form of bread and 
wine, after the consecration thereof, there is not present, really, the nat- 
ural body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, or that in the flesh, under 
form of bread, is not thn very blood of Christ, or that with the blood, under the 
form of wine, is not the very flesh of Christ, as well apart as if they were 
both together, then he shall be adjudged a heretic, and suffer death by 
burninq." * 

* Pickering's Statutes, vol. iv., p. 471. 



72 AROUND THE WORLD. 

When persecuting " Bloody Mary " — a devoted Chris- 
tian by profession — was reproved for those merciless butch- 
eries perpetrated for Christ's sake, she replied, " As the 
souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, 
there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the 
divine vengeance by burning them on earth." 

Wherever a purse-proud Christianity has gained the most 
power, it has most obstructed the march of civilization, as in 
Spain and Italy. Guizot, the great historian of civilization 
in France, tells us that " when any war arose between power 
and liberty, the Christian Church always planted itself on 
the side of power, against liberty." This churchal Chris- 
tianity in our midst is the importation of the dark ages, the 
horrid nightmare of the world. It is immoral in its ten- 
dency ; for it sends good moral men to hell, and the lifelong 
wicked to heaven, if soundly orthodox. According to the 
sectarist's belief, a man may commit all manner of crimes, — 
lie, swear, cheat, steal, and murder, — then comply with the 
" conditions of salvation," and swing from the gallows to 
glory ! 

Consult the records of capital punishment. Nearly every 
victim attended, during the last weeks of imprisonment, by 
the clergy, makes full confession, repents, believes, and with 
a spasm leaps from hemp to heaven. For proof, we are 
referred to the repentant " thief upon the cross," and all 
closing up with the hymn, — 

" While the lamp holds out to bum, 
The vilest sinner may return. " 

Some of the most distinguished scientists and learned 
jurists in England are deists, — disbelieving in immortality, 
revelation, and the miraculous conception. This, on church- 
al grounds, seals their damnation. There are many good 
men in churches, however, — good and excellent in spite of 
the demoralizing tendencies of their creeds. 



MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. 73 

The immortal fathers of American independence were 
theists. Abraham Lincoln was an " infidel." He made no 
profession of Christianity. He had no " saving faith in the 
atoning blood of the Lord Jesus." He was neither con- 
verted, " born again," nor baptized. He joined no Christian 
church, and yet was hurled, with a "fell shot," from a 
theater into eternity ! And, if the orthodox creed be true, 
Lincoln, the martyred president, is in hell, — wailing this 
moment with the damned in hell ! If so, let it be my doom. 
I would prefer hell — whatever it may be — with Lincoln, 
Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Washington, Shak- 
speare, Byron, Burns, Shelley, Edgar A. Poe, Dickens, 
Humboldt, and the whole galaxy of political, intellectual, and 
moral lights of the world, to that little jasper-walled heaven 
of the sectarian Christian, where a few lonesome, long-vis- 
aged saints, saved through another's merits, wave palms and 
serenade the Jewish Jehovah for ever ! Orthodox Christian- 
ity, with its fanaticism, superstition, and cramping creeds, is 
rapidly sinking, in enlightened countries, into hopeless de- 
crepitude and remediless decay. It has failed to save the 
world. Professing Jesus, it has practiced Moses. Its sun 
is setting, its corpse awaiting burial. 

Quietly drinking the cup, patiently receiving the poisoned 
arrows of secular and sectarian spite, I forwarded to the 
Victoria press in those days of journalistic persecution no 
retaliatory replies ; neither did I correct the purposed mis- 
representations of press reporters. Sitting at the feet of the 
persecuted and martyred Nazarene, I had learned to return 
good for evil and blessing for cursing. In the economy of 
the universe I knew that thorns precede moral victories, and 
Calvarys ascensions into the Heavens. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AUSTRALIA. 

..." A continent of beauty sleeping, on a summer sea, 

Lying all at rest and silent, never dreaming what should be, . . . 

Rich with stores of mineral wealth, 

And flocks and herds by land and sea. . . . 

Here through veins with young life swelling, rolls the blood that rules the world; 

Here as hers, and dear as honor, England's banner floats unfurled. 

Oh, Australia ! fair and lovely, empress of the Southern Sea, 

What a glorious fame awaits thee in the future's history. 

Land of wealth and land of beauty, tropic suns and arctic snows, 

Where the splendid noontide blazes, where the raging storm-wind blows ; 

Be thou proud, and be thou daring, ever true to God and man ; 

In all evil be to rearward, in all good take thou the van ! 

Only let thy hands be stainless, let thy life be pure and true, 

And a destiny awaits thee, such as nations never knew." — Agnes Leane. 

Deep is the bond of sympathy existing between Austra- 
lians and Americans. Both are English-speaking swarms 
from the same old hive. 

The entire population of Australia at the close of 1896 was 
estimated by census to have been 4,325,151. When the cen- 
sus was taken in 1891, the population of the seven colonies 
was 3,809,895. Sometimes New Zealand and Tasmania are 
included in the phrase, " the colonies." The above figures 
show that the increase during the past five years has been 
much less rapid than formerly. 

The home-born are considered more desirable citizens than 
immigrants. By the time of the next census Australia will 
doubtless number over five million. 

Australians are rather an uneasy and nomadic-inclined 
people. Last year 210,000 left Victoria — a few for South 
Africa, but the most of them for the gold-fields of Western 
Australia. Many have returned to Victoria, and more will. 
These gold-fields are doubtless very rich ; but it requires a 
mint of capital to successfully work them. The principal 



AUSTRALIA. 



75 



city is Coolgardie. It numbers about 30,000. This Western 
Colony has drawn largely from all of the other colonies. 
Tasmania, famous for its fine climate, is fast increasing in 
numbers. Its last native died a generation ago. Of the col- 
onies, all considered, New South Wales has excelled Victoria 
in the increase of population. Why, is not clear to me. 
Americans universally prefer Melbourne to Sydney for resi- 
dence or business. The latter is more conservative. New 
South Wales is the oldest of the colonies. It has free trade. 




The Kangaroo at Home. 

It lost 842 more people last year than it gained. It is given 
to boasting. 

A general land boom occurred several years ago, and 
after collapse, with the failure of banks in Melbourne, detri- 
mentally affected the whole country- Now, the people are 
regaining their normal condition of prosperity and the coun- 
try its consequent attractiveness. Booms are curses, and 
land speculators are the bane of society. American cities 
have had, and still have, their fill of them. They are moral 
pests, •heartless and seemingly soulless. Better be a beggar, 



76 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

considering the long stretch of years here and hereafter, than 
a clutching money-loaner or a city-lot speculator. If for no 
other reason, hell is a necessity to adjudicate and equalize the 
inequalities of this life : it is the invisible realm of discipline, 
the realm of revealings, where preys the undying worm of 
remorse. 

AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION. 

This great island continent is just now in the throes of a 
new birth — a union birth — a federation birth of all the col- 
onies into one, constituting the United States of Australia. 
Such federation is considered indispensable for self-protection 
and internal improvement alike. A single stick, as is said, is 
easily broken ; a compact bundle of them defies the giant. 
These colonies now have each its governor, sent from Eng- 
land ; each, too, has its imposing House of Parliament, and 
each makes its own local laws. New South Wales, as afore- 
said, is free-trade ; while Victoria has a protective tariff. 
Each is a trifle jealous of the other. 

When I visited Adelaide, March 24, 1897, on my way to 
Ceylon, the recently elected Federators were in session at 
Adelaide, the capital of the South Australian colony. Step- 
ping into their Parliament building, I had the pleasure of 
seeing this august body in council and of hearing the address 
of the Hon. Mr. Barton. The resolutions commenced as 
follows : — 

1. That in order to enlarge the powers of self-government of the people 
of Australia, it is desirable to create a Federal Government which shall 
exercise authority throughout the federated colonies, subject to the follow- 
ing principal conditions : . . . 

Among this body of men elected by the popular vote was 
the tall manly form of Alfred Deakin, M. P., formerly so 
well known in the Spiritualistic circles of Melbourne. His 
soul at present is re-incarnated into politics — a pursuit that 
God knows needs just such honest and honorable men. 

Though generally very low and inferior, some of the abo- 
rigines in Western Australia have Jewish features, and fol- 



AUSTRALIA. 



77 



low the circumcising laws of Moses. Professor Holmes, an 
explorer, says : " Many of the natives have broad, and in 
some instances, high foreheads, indicating intellectual facul- 
ties, which, however, it seems in most cases, are more 
difficult to cultivate than the appearance of the head would 




Australian Native. 



lead one to expect. Among the Fraser Range blacks I 
found one who had a moderately aquiline nose and a decid- 
edly Jewish appearance." 

At a station not far distant from Melbourne I witnessed 
them hurling the boomerang, saw them kindle fires with 
sticks of dry wood and go through with a sort of wild, wor- 
shipful dance, not wholly unlike the dances of our North 
American Indians. 



78 ABOUND THE WORLD. 



THE AUSTRALIAN NATIVES. 



The aboriginal inhabitants of Australia are called " black 
men." They are not black, only dark olive complexioned, 
bearing no real resemblance to African negroes. Seen walk- 
ing from you, their physical appearance is rather command- 
ing. They are straight as arrows, and flexible in their 
motions. The skin is brown and smooth, and the hair 
straight, black, and glossy. Their foreheads are low, eyes 
full and far apart, nose broad, mouth wide, and filled with 
large, white teeth. When sporting, using the boomerang, or 
throwing the spear, their attitudes are exceedingly graceful. 
Many of the men not only have sinewy and finely-chiseled 
limbs, but long beards that would naturally excite the envy 
of smirking aristocrats. 

Sir Thomas L. Mitchell says, " They are a fine race of 
men. Their bodies individually, as well as the groups which 
they formed, would have delighted the eye of an artist. Is 
it fancy? but I am far more pleased in seeing the naked 
body of the black fellow than that of the white man. When 
I was in Paris, I was often in the public baths, and how few 
well-made men did I see ! " 

Dr. Leichhardt, when visiting Australia, gave this descrip- 
tion : " The proportions of the body in the women and the 
men are as perfect as those of the Caucasian race ; and the 
artist would find an inexhaustible source of observation and 
study among the black tribes." 

These aborigines, residue of a very ancient race, number 
little over a thousand now in the colony of Victoria, and 
probably not many over a hundred thousand in the entire 
country. The fittest survives. Such is the logic of law. 

THEOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 

Religion is innate, and in some form universal. Theology 
is man-made, stinging the bosom that hugs it. Belief affects 
the moral conduct. 



AUSTRALIA. 79 

Ethnologists and Australian residents differ in their esti- 
mates of the native character. Certain missionaries, pro- 
nouncing them the lowest specimens of humanity, declare 
that they have "no conception of Jehovah, innate depravity, 
justification by faith, nor pardon through a sacrificial re- 
demption." This is quite likely ; all of which, putting the 
evangelical construction upon these terms, is quite to the 
credit of these "heathen" aborigines. 

It is the united testimony of thoughtful, honorable men, 
however, that aboriginal children are noted for retention of 
memory, quickness of perception, and readiness to acquire 
the usual elements of education. This was demonstrated by 
the experimental school at the Merri-Merri. And, a few 
years since, an aboriginal boy in the Normal School of Syd- 
ney carried off the prize from all his white companions. 
They are trusting and affectionate among themselves. Re- 
spect to age is rigidly enforced. Without the hollow fashions 
and jealousies, without the conventional decorum and re- 
straints, of civilized society, they sing and gambol in the 
evening-time as though life were a continuous carnival. 
Suicide is unknown among them. Some of them tattoo 
themselves. The women use ochre, and other colored ingre- 
dients, to paint their faces. What of it ? English, French, 
and American women quite generally paint and powder. 
What a merciless tyrant is fashion ! 

TESTIMONIES IN EAVOR OF THE "WILD AUSTRALIANS. 

These inhabitants, evidently a cross between the African 
and the Malay, exhibit some excellent traits of character. 
Archbishop Polding, of New South Wales, said to the Sydney 
Legislature, " I have no reason to think that the primitive 
natives, uncontaminated with modern civilizations, are much 
lower than ourselves, in many respects. The missionary 
Ridley, noted for his candor, declared that in mental acumen, 
and in quickness of sight and hearing, they surpass most 
white people." 



80 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

Mr. Batman, not inaptly denominated the William Penn 
of the colony, finished an interesting account of the original 
inhabitants, many years since, in these words : " They cer- 
tainly appear to me to be the most superior race of natives 
which I have ever seen." This is an extreme view : the 
Maoris of New Zealand, and certain other races in the Pa- 
cific islands, are vastly their superiors. European interfer- 
ence here, as elsewhere, has proved a destructive curse to 
the original inhabitants. 

Essayists of materialistic tendencies have strangely, though 
doubtless undesignedly, underrated the intelligence, the 
moral and religious position, of the Australian tribes. Mr. 
Whitman, writicg in " The Boston Radical " upon ideas re- 
lating to immortality, says, — 

" The intellectual plane of the Hottentots, Andamanas, many of the 
Australians and Tasmanians, and some of the Esquimaux, is but little, 
if any, better than that of the ape-like Bushmen just described. It has 
been said that the Australian savages can not count their own fingers, 
not even those of one hand. ' ' 

If this writer had ever conversed with old colonial resi- 
dents, and read the carefully-written works of Mitchell, 
Sturt, Leichhardt, and Gov. Gray ; or if he were conver- 
sant with the history of William Buckley, who lived with 
the Australian natives thirty-two years, never seeing, during 
this time, a white man's face, — he would not have written 
thus disparagingly, and unjustly too, of these aborigines. 
Long acquaintance and study led Sir Thomas Mitchell to 
exclaim, " They are as apt and intelligent as any other race 
of men I am acquainted with." Mr. Burke bears this testi- 
mony before the Committee of Council in 1858 : "I believe," 
says he, " the intelligence of the aborigines has been much 
misunderstood. The introduction of civilization has not 
tended to develop their character advantageously ; but, on 
the contrary, they have suffered a moral and physical degra 
dation, which has re-acted upon their intellectual powers." 



A7JSTBALTA. 81 

CLOTHESTG. — COOKESTG. — HOMES. 

Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germanic tribes spent 
" whole days before the fire altogether naked." The old 
Caledonians of Scotland were described by the Romans on 
this wise : " They live in tents, without shoes, and naked." 
Gov. Hunter thus mentions his glance at the natives of 
Jervis Bay, New South Wales, Australia, in 1789 : " They 
were all perfectly naked, except one young fellow, who 
had a bunch of grass fastened round his waist, which came 
up behind like the tail of a kangaroo." 

The climate being temperate or tropical, they require but 
little clothing. In the colder portion of the season, they 
wear rugs made of opossum and kangaroo skins. They are 
not given to finery. The feathers of the emu, swan, cock- 
atoo, &c, are their ornaments upon important occasions. 
Some tattoo themselves. This custom, prevailing quite gen- 
erally among uncivilized nations inhabiting warm countries, 
owes its origin probably to a want of mental resources, and 
more attractive employment of time, together with a love of 
ornament. They bore the cartilage of the nose to suspend 
bones and shells. American ladies prefer having the ears 
bored. The Chinese compress their feet, French women 
their waists. 

Nutrition was abundant till the invasions of the Euro- 
peans. They pitched their kangaroo meat upon live coals, 
steamed their fish, and baked their turtles in the shell. 
Hunting wild honey was a favorite pursuit. The mysnong- 
root, the ends of tender grass-bulbs, the tops of certain 
palms, and various wild berries, also constituted articles of 
diet. Their dwelling-places, though unsubstantial, were suf- 
ficiently comfortable for such a fine, warm climate. Sticks, 
reeds, boughs, and blankets, by the side of a rock or tree, 
with opossum rugs for breakwinds, were about all they de- 
sired. These homes, though comparatively transient, were 
made musical and happy in early night-time with the rela- 



82 AROUND THE WORLD. 

tion of droll stories, the appearance of weird apparitions, 
the song, and the dance. The learned Dr. Laml ie, visiting 
and spending a long time either with, or in the vicinity of, 
the natives, gives this interesting description : "In some 
places, large, well-constructed habitations, shaped in the 
form of a span-roof, thatched with reeds, pleasantly situated 
on the verge of a lake, though quite unique, were highly 
creditable to their industry and skill." They are very 
warm-hearted in their natures, and kind to their aged ; they 
seldom have but one wife at the same time ; they will always 
generously divide with each other, and especially with Euro- 
peans who visit them. " These Australians drank only 
water," says Mr. Thomas, " till white men introduced their 
poisonous liquors ; and imported private diseases also, that 
are now rapidly sweeping them off from the face of the 
earth." Mr. Protector Robinson reported officially, that 
" nine-tenths of the mischief charged to the aborigines is the 
result of the white men's interference with the native 
women." 

RELIGIOUS NOTIONS AND CUSTOMS. 

Worship is natural to all grades of humanity. There 
have been found, among the aborigines in portions of Austra- 
lia, remnants of ancient faiths and traditional mythologies. 
Caves have been opened along the coast, on the walls of 
which were drawn unique and telling figures. The bottoms 
were handsomely paved. Mystic circles have been noticed 
on the tops of hills, the stones of which were arranged 
after the Druidical fashion. Enough has been discovered to 
indicate their connection with the civilizations of the most 
early Asiatic races. 

Though probably dimly conscious of an indivisible deific 
Presence, they evidently adored the starry hosts, — believed 
in a multiplicity of gods, and in some sort of a future exist- 
ence. " Go down, black fellow ; come up, white man ! " is at 
present a coipmon saying among them. That critical ethnol- 



AUSTRALIA. 83 

ogist, Strzelecki, says in his exhaustive volume, " The native 
Australians, recognizing a God, whose duty it is to supply 
them with all the necessaries of life, regard themselves as 
his servants. They believe in immortality, and locate their 
heaven in the stars : they do not dread God, but reserve all 
their fears for the evil spirit. To this spirit, the ' Debbie,' 
they render a sort of worship." 

Upon each returning November, the Australian spring- 
time, these natives hold the grand festival of the Pleiades, 
called the " Corroboree." It was a matter of individual 
regret that I could not have personally witnessed this native 
anniversary. Those in Northern and North-eastern Australia 
are far the most interesting. These " corroborees," cele- 
brated only in the spring, when this cluster of stars shines the 
most brilliantly, are evidently a kind of worship paid to the 
Pleiades " as a constellation announcing the spring season." 
Their monthly festivals and dances are in honor of the 
moon. An intelligent native said to me in Sandhurst, " The 
Pleiades are the children of the moon, and very good to us 
black people." The remark reminded me of a line in that 
Biblical drama, the Book of Job, — 

" The sweet influences of the Pleiades." 

These, called by the Romans " Vergilise," the stars of spring, 
appear above the horizon at evening-time in November, and 
are visible in these regions all night. The prophets of the 
tribes believe that these stars rule natural causes. Some of 
their festivals are connected with the worship of their dead 
ancestors. These last three days. 

EEOM -WHENCE TBESE NATIVES? 

Their origin is involved in impenetrable obscurity; and 
those who have attempted to trace their migrations, or detect 
the links which connect them to the primitive races, have 
failed of satisfying even themselves. The structure of the 
language is said to be the most nearly identified with the 



84 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Sanscrit ; others choose to connect it with the nomad .c Tar- 
tars. In physical type they resemble the Malays, and yet 
there is not a Malay word in their language. They have 
religious mysteries, and a fearful method of initiation. Some 
of the tribes practice, like Jews and Mohammedans, the 
rite of circumcision. They wear charms upon their persons ; 
and certain of the old chiefs, looking into rock-crystals, pro- 
fess to see the future. They find the bodies of murdered 
men by watching the trail of beetles. Mourning paint to be 
used for the face is invariably white. Young mothers used 
to very frequently name their children after flowers. A sur- 
name was sometimes added, descriptive of personal pecu- 
liarities. When a child is named after another person, and 
this person dies, the name dies also. The dead are never 
spoken of by name, nor referred to only by implication. 
They refrain from touching a dead body, as did the Jews and 
ancient Phoenicians. That a bond of brotherhood exists 
among the dark races of Australia and the Indian seas, is 
indisputable ; but whence they originally sprang, and by 
what circumstances they became scattered over thousands of 
miles, through seventy degrees of latitude, remains a prob- 
lem to be solved. Doubtless the Australian country was 
peopled long before Abraham went down into Egypt, or 
before the walls of ancient Nineveh and Thebes were raised 
to their proud position. 

THE NATIVE'S BELIEF IN" SPIRITS. 

Spirit is the underlying cause of all motion, energy, and 
moral activity. In the aboriginal " ceremonies, superstitions, 
and beliefs, there may be traced," says Mr. Parker, " relics 
of sun-worship, serpent-worship, and the worship of an- 
cestral spirits whom they profess to frequently see." They 
believe that one class of spirits dwell in the air, another in 
the mountain, and others still wander about among the 
tall trees. These natives seldom quit a camp-fire at night, 
for fear of encountering malignant spirits. Mr. Benwick, 



AUSTRALIA. 85 

among other marvels, writes this : " A spirit appeared to a 
lubra, — black woman, — announcing her speedy death. She 
related the occurrence the next day, with serious forebodings. 
Two days after seeing the apparition she died. Believing 
in demoniacal possession, the mediumistic 'medicine-men' 
of the tribe ' exorcise the evil spirits,' something as did Jesus 
and the apostles in New-Testament times. This class of 
men also alleviate pain, remove disease, and heal the sick, by 
charms and magnetic manipulations. They dance within 
the inclosures of mystic rings, fall in the trance, and de- 
scribe the marvelous visions beheld." The Rev. Mr. Ridley 
gives the following account of a " corroboree : " " At 
Burndtha, on the Barwon, I met a company of forty blacks 
engaging in a ceremony of some mystical purpose. A chorus 
of twenty, old and young, were singing, and beating time 
with boomerangs. A dozen or more were looking on. Sud- 
denly, from under a sheet of bark, darted a man, with his 
body whitened by pipe-clay, his face painted yellow, and a 
tuft of feathers fastened upon the top of his head. He stood 
twenty minutes gazing upwards. One of the aborigines, 
who stood by, said he was looking for the spirits of dead 
men. At length they came, proving to be evil spirits, and a 
brisk conflict followed. Others of the party joined in this 
warfare with the 'powers in the air,' driving the ghosts 
away." They have a singular ceremony, called Ye pene amie 
gai, or dance of separate spirits. Holding branches in their 
hands, they dance in measured tread, and sing, till they fall 
prostrate in a sort of ecstatic trance. While in this condi- 
tion, they hold converse with spirits, and utter prophecies. 

DECLINE AND DESTINY. 

Nominally the aged men are their chiefs, exercising the 
principal influence in the tribes. " Civilization" is a very in- 
definite term. Australian aborigines, believing it to consist 
hi being and doing like white men, engage in smoking, 
swearing, tricking, drinking, and gambling. The Rev. J. 



86 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

C. S. Handt, Lutheran missionary, bears this testimony: "A 
principal cause of their decrease is the prostitution of their 
wives to the Europeans. This base intercourse not only 
retards the procreation of their own race, but almost always 
tends to the destruction of the offspring brought into exist- 
ence by its means." Mr. Cunningham, well known in 
England and the English colonies of the Pacific, wrote thus: 
" Personal prostitution, among those associating with the 
whites, is carried on to a great extent, the husbands disposing 
of the favor of their wives to the convict servants, for a 
slice of bread, or a pipe of tobacco. The children produced 
by this intercourse are generally sacrificed." 

Infanticide is very prevalent. Tradition says it did not 
exist in the past. At present half-caste infants appear to be 
the most exposed to this fate. Chiefs living and roaming 
back in the mountains, or interior districts, acknowledge 
that they cannot stop the murderous practice. When the 
parties are reproved for the unnatural crime, they at once 
respond, " We have no country now, no good children now, 
and nothing to keep them on." A glance at the journals 
reveals the fact that infanticide is not uncommon in Victoria ; 
while foeticide is a quite common practice in the most aris- 
tocratic families. It is murder nevertheless. 

Without hope, without seeming ambition, the remaining 
Australian natives have sunk down into a state of stupid 
listlessness. They know they are declining, and are con- 
scious of their destiny. It seems an inflexible law of nature, 
that aboriginal races must, in every instance, either perish, or 
be amalgamated with the general popidation of the country. 
In Tasmania, originally known as Van Diemen's Land, there 
is not a native left. The bell of fate has tolled ; and the 
last man of his race, putting down his rude pilgrim staff, 
has gone on to the shadowy land of immortality. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FROM NEW ZEALAND ONWARD. 

"There's a wideness in God's mercy 
Like the wideness of the sea ; 
There's a kindness in His justice 
Which is more than Liberty. 
% 
"For the love of God is broader 
Than the measure of man's mind, 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind." 

None choose the land of their birth ; and none can fully 
fathom the finer forces connected with racial influences. If 
deer and foxes leave the scent or aura of their footsteps 
along their beaten paths, why should not aboriginal men im- 
part a characteristic emanation to the soil their feet pressed 
and to the atmosphere the)- breathed ? They certainly do. 
Seemingly minute causes produce mighty effects. People 
born in the western portion of America naturally grow tall, 
and become wiry, angular and active, like our nearly extinct 
Indians. In South Africa children born of European parents 
are not only more rounded in features and sluggishly heavy, 
but they are inclined to be indolent like the Hottentots. 
The theory is not without confirmation. 

Sailing — we are still thinking, reasoning, reflecting. No 
library, no daily journals : time drags. And what is time ? 
A series of conscious impressions daguerreotyped upon the 
spiritual sensorium. And, considered with reference to the 
primal God-principle, all are equally aged. Each is piv- 
oted in the centre of eternity. Causes are before effects ; 
so are souls before bodies. To affirm that bodies make souls, 
is only paralleled by the position that ignorance is the source 



88 AROUND THE WORLD. 

of knowledge ; that matter may produce spirit, and nonen- 
tity reality. In dream and trance, memory sometimes sc 
dispels slumber that the conscious soul recovers recollections 
of pre-existence, of its descent and destiny, 

TOO TRUSTING, OR NOT? 

If, as Lord Bacon said, "reading makes the full man, 
talking the ready man, and writing the exact man," travel 
makes the doubting man. The past eight months' experi- 
ences'in the colonies and islands of the Pacific have cooled 
my ardor as to the immediate approach of any world's mil- 
lenium. I can but think of these lines in the " Songs of the 
Sierras : " — 

" For I am older, by a score, 
Than many born long, long before, 
If sorrows be the sum of life." 

The play of Hector and Achilles is being constantly re- 
acted in my presence. Though there are tropical sunsets, 
and gorgeous skies, seen on this sapphire-crowned ocean, 
"my" and "mine " are the rallying-words. Men are exceed- 
ingly intriguing and scheming. Why, there are men mean 
enough, on this Polynesian part of the globe, to steal cocoa- 
nuts from a blind savage, or the sandals from the feet of 
Jesus * It saddens my soul. 

Reviewing the fading years of half a century, I am certain 
of having believed too much, trusted too much, and confided 
too much in others. And yet is it noble or wise to write 
upon every human forehead, " Cave hominem" — beware of 
man ? Is there not a golden mean ? Are not the extremes 
of distrust and suspicion a long way from a just estimate of 
human nature? And may not the constant exercise of 
harrowing fears and doubts be hindrances, rather than helps 
to the soul's unfoldment ? 



FROM NEW ZEALAND ONWAED. 89 

MEN IN AND OF THE WORLD. 

It quite shocked me, a few hours siuce, to hear a man say, 
" Well, the only two principles insuring success in this age 
are, to look out for one's self first, and, secondly, to con- 
sider every man a rogue till proved honest." Are not such 
words revelators, — voiced echoes out of a grasping, canker- 
ing selfishness ? Is not a man-distruster a bad man-helper ? 
Did ever a libertine believe in the virtue of woman ? Or did 
ever a thief like Ahab fail to keep his locks and keys bright ? 
The sordid, selfish man, the petty village lawyer, knows 
no other text than this : " To them that are under the law 
I became as under the law, and to them that are without 
law, as without law ; " adding, not as Paul did, " that I 
might gain them" but, " that I might gain their fees." In 
this money-worshiping, transition state of society, men seem 
to be drifting into a set of repulsive atoms, each seeking his 
own gain and welfare to the neglect of the common weal. 
This " getting-on system, " with the " survival of the fit- 
test " and the " Devil take the hindmost," is well expressed 
in the abominable lines, — 

" As I walked by myself, I said to myself, 
And the selfsame self said to me, 
Look out for thyself : take care of thyself 
For nobody cares for thee." 

Let us deepen the thought, and widen the vision, of exist- 
ence ! Essential spirit infills and spans all space. The " image 
of God" — the divine spark — is within; and human na- 
ture, therefore, sounded to its depths, is good. If there is 
not a charity that " believeth al] things," there is a charity 
that " hopeth all things ; " and, further, there is in the 
world tender sympathy, genuine friendship, manly honesty, 
generous benevolence, unselfish love ; and there are beauti- 
ful characters too : the angels affirm it. Cunning, shrewd, 
and selfish men, who can not discover it, are comparable to 
blind men who can not see the suu. Be it mine still to seek 



90 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the good of others first, and to believe every man honest till 
proven to the contrary. If the practice of such principles 
produce failure, let "failure " be carved on my tombstone. 

TRUCKLING TRIMMERS. 

He who removes a thorn, and plants a rose, who brushes 
away a falling tear, plucks a scale from a theologian's eye, 
or transforms a bit of chaos into kosmos, is a benefactor of 
his race. Turn over the picture. Do not the angels weep 
o'er the platitudes of truckling, two-faced, many-sided hypo- 
crites, standing in market-places, in pulpits, and upon public 
rostrums, with no higher aims than gold, or a stamping, sen- 
sational applause ? Oh for men of principle ! Policy-men 
fatten to-day, to faint in the to-morrow of eternity. It was a 
childish weakness in Peter to deny " knowing the man." 
Erasmus was too much of a trimmer. Luther was a re- 
former that made Rome tremble. The waters of a dashing 
cascade are sweet and fresh. A good, screaming fanatic, 
with sling and stone, will always floor the greatest giants, 
though armed with the newest devices of controversy. I 
sympathize deeply with fanatics. They generally have some- 
thing to say, and are brave enough to say it. They keep 
the mental world in motion. John the Baptist was a fa- 
natic. Fanaticism is not coarse, brawling, blatant, over- 
bearing egotism, but earnest enthusiasm, steady, stirring 
self-denial, coupled with a conviction of some living truth 
as a potent spiritual force. These fanatics, these resurrected 
souls, preach of heaven on earth, sing of Utopia to-day, and 
often die early, as did Keats. 

" Thy leaf has perished in the green." 
CANNIBALISM AND COMMUNISM. 

Passing an art-gallery in Dunedin, a friend pointed me to 
a photograph of an old, tattooed Maori, who had assisted in 
baking and eating seventeen human bodies since his remem- 



FROM NEW ZEALAND ONWARD. 91 

brance. Cannibal eats cannibal, and clinging, parasitic souls 
feast upon the magnetic life of other souls. Such is selfish- 
ness, — the devouring, corroding selfishness of the world 
And yet who has not pictured and prayed for the prophets 
realization of " Zion " ? or who has not dreamed of that 
golden age where love shall be law, where the only rivalry 
shall be in doing the most good to others, where harmonial 
souls shall breathe benedictions of peace and good-will, and 
where a competitive, clutching self-appropriativeness shall 
have become a half -forgotten tradition ? May we not still 
hope that, before the sunset of this century, co-operative 
leagues, and communistic fraternities, may dot the land, as 
cities of light set upon a thousand hills. 

PLATO'S REPUBLIC. 

The most eminent philosophers and sages of antiquity, 
when mediumistically illumined by heavenly wisdom, either 
conceived or wrote of a coming communism, — a state of 
society where every one would be respected according to his 
worth, where individual happiness would be sought in seek- 
ing the happiness of all, and where the isolated family would 
widen out into co-operative combinations, and these into 
spiritual families, with wisdom and love the governing 
powers. 

Among the more prominent of this school was the Grecian 
Plato. This prince of philosophers, flourishing some time 
before the Christian era, defined a well-ordered, if not an 
ideally perfect state of social life, to be known as a " repub- 
lic." Though treating largely of justice and charity, he 
considered absolute " communism of property" an indispen- 
sable condition. He lived unmarried, had no children, died 
a celibate! , 

SIR THOMAS MORE'S UTOPIA. 

Looseness in the use of phraseology causes many fruitless 
discussions. " Socialism " and " communism " are not inter- 



92 AROUND THE WORLD. 

changeable terms. Communism proper should never be con- 
founded with " Red Republicanism," the " Paris Commune," 
or any form of " loose socialism." They are as unlike as 
Christ and Belial. Socialism implies co-operation, or any 
form of association which does not involve the abolition of 
private property ; while communism in the absolute is that 
unselfish apostolic system which " holds all things in common." 
Sir T. More, at one time privy councilor to Henry VIII., 
and afterwards lord high chancelor, published his Utopian 
theories in 1516, creating a deal of excitement because of 
his scholarship and high social position. This distinguished 
personage painted his conceptions of a commonwealth, or 
true state of society, as a " Sappy Island" based socially 
upon the Utopian idea of equality of rights and the com- 
munism of property. He says, — 

" Thus have I described to you, as particularly as I could, the constitu- 
tion of that commonwealth, Utopia, which I do not only think to be 
the best in the world, but to be, indeed, the only commonwealth that truly 
deserves the name. In all other places it is visible, that, whereas people 
talk of a commonwealth, every man only seeks his own wealth; but in 
Utopia, where no man has any property, all men do zealously pursue the 
good of the public, . . . for every man has a right to every thing. 
There is no unequal distribution ; no man is poor, nor in any necessity; 
and, though no man has any thing, yet they are all rich; for what can 
make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxie- 
ties, neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless com- 
plaints of others ? " » 

Respecting labor, he speaks as follows : — 

' ' They do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning 
till night, as if they were beasts of burden; which, as it is indeed a heavy 
slavery, so it is the common course of life of all tradesmen everywhere 
except among the Utopians; but they, dividing the day and night into 
twenty-four hours, appoint eight hours of these for work, and the re- 
mainder for rest and individual improvement. Each seeks another's 
good; and, as to the studies and employments of women, all living in 
Utopia learn some trade. Industry is honorable: men and women go in 
large numbers to hear lectures of one sort or another, according to the 
variety of their inclinations. Women are sometimes made priests, . . . 



FROM NEW ZEALAND ONWARD. 93 

»nd a peace that the world knows not of crowns the df ,ys of the happy 
dwellers upon this island." 

ST. SIMON AND FOURIER. 

No man could be a socialist or communist, without being 
moved by a welfare for his fellow-men. 'It was to Horace 
Greeley's credit that he took such a deep interest in the 
North American phalanx. Socialism in Europe, promoted 
not by the poor, but for the poor, has generally been 
espoused by men of generous impulses and honorable enthu- 
siasm. Fourier's great idea was to make labor attractive. 
He thought, that, by rightly grouping people together for 
work, all the natural passions would fall into harmony, and 
become utilized for human good. The movement gained 
but little footing in France. St. Simon, dying in 1825 at 
the age of sixty-five, had already become quite an author. 
He contended in his books that all social institutions ought 
to aim at the amelioration, physical, mental, and moral, of 
the poorer classes ; that privileges of birth should be abol- 
ished, and the state be the ultimate owner of all lands, all 
public works, and all realized property. Associative effort 
was to be among the prominent teachings of science, the 
Church, and the State ; while the natural inequalities of 
men, as primal gradations, were to be made basic pillars in 
this Simonian order of social life. St. Simon was eccentric, 
and aflame with humanitarian sentiments. He was far more 
imaginative than practical. Suffice it, that, while many of 
the ideas put forth were rational, the plan, though eagerly 
seized by a few trusting disciples, proved a speedy failure. 

ROBERT OWEN. 

This philanthropist and great social reformer, while show- 
ing at New Lanark, Scotland, that he was a clear-headed 
business-man, proved himself at the same time a genuine 
humanitarian. If a dreamer, he dreamed grand and golden 
dreams ; and, what was more praiseworthy, sought to realize 



94 AROUND THE WORLD. 

tliem. As the friend of man, he frequently said to English 
society, " If you want the poorer classes to become better 
men, place them in better circumstances ; raise the wages 
of laborers, diminish their hours of hard work, increase their 
food, improve their dwellings, expand their range of thought ; 
let science serve them, culture refine them ; and, above all, 
help them to help themselves." Though emperors and kings 
had listened to Mr. Owen, and though distinguished states- 
men had been his associates, he never forgot the crowning 
ideal principle of his life, — communism ! 

Rising from the miry plains of selfishness, to the mountain- 
tops of equality and " good-will to men," it may be clearly 
seen that communism is the voice of God through Nature. 
Light and air, rain and sunshine, are common. The prince 
and the pauper child, at the hour of birth, are equal and 
common. Death is common to king and subject. And the 
laws of the universe are common. 

A disorderly, anti-law, anti-marriage " Paris commune " 
aside, Mr. Owen meant by communism that state of society 
in which the common fruits of industry, and the common 
results of science, intellect, and a sincere benevolence, should 
be so diffused that poverty would be unknown, and crime 
quite impossible. Though a theist, contending that "the- 
ology was a mental disease," though loathing pious cant and 
churchal superstitions, he was nevertheless a religious man 
in the best sense of the term. Non-immortality did not sat- 
isfy the wants of his great, manly soul. Investigating the 
Spiritual manifestations, in the later years of his life, he 
became a believer in a future existence. He died, or, rather, 
went up one step higher, a Spiritualist. Robert Dale Owen 
is the worthy son of such a sire. 

Many are the pleasant hours that I've whiled away listening 
to Elder Frederic W. Evans's descriptions of memorable 
occurrences transpiring in the life of the large-hearted Robert 
Owen. It may not be generally known that Elder Frederic, 
one of the prominent Shaker elders at Mount Lebanon, 



FROM NEW ZEALAND ONWARD. 95 

N.Y., was one of the Harmonial brotherhood, settling with 
Mr. Owen upon the thirty thousand acres purchased of the 
Rappites in New Harmony, Ind. This great and good man, 
a communist and Spiritualist to the last, passed to the world 
of spirits Nov. 17, 1858. 

" They made him a grave too cold and damp 
For a soul so warm and true." 

Looking with thoughtful, cosmopolitan eye at the state of 
society in different countries ; considering the poverty of 
Pekin, the beggary in Constantinople, the infanticide in 
Paris, the political corruption in New York, and the fifty 
thousand thieves, one hundred thousand prostitutes, and one 
hundred and sixty-five thousand paupers, of London, — is it 
strange that noble souls in all lands yearn for social recon- 
struction ? Are not mediaeval methods already dead ? Are 
not present political and social systems falling to pieces? 
What mean these panics, strikes, internationales, tracles'- 
unions, and co-operative fraternities ? Does not Whittier, 
writing of recurring cycles, say, — 

" The new is old, the old is new " ? 
JESUS THE SYRIAN COMMUNIST. 

Oh, the moral altitudes attained by those great practical 
communists of the past, Jesus and the apostles ! The Naz- 
arene, gifted with the intellect of man, and the love of 
woman, loathed that reform which talked platitudes of well- 
meaning, and did no work. His promise was " to him that 
doeth the will of my Father." The present "landshark" 
talk about the sacredness of private property constituted no 
part of Jesus' teaching. The apostles, imbibing his spirit, pro- 
nounced woes upon the selfishly rich. " Go to, now," says 
St. James, " ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries 
that shall come upon you ; . . . your gold and silver is can- 
kered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you." 
Few need to be reminded of the "gift of tongues," and the 



96 



ABOUND THE WORLD. 



other rich spiritual gifts showered upon trusting hearts on 
the " Day of Pentecost." The power was so marvelous that 
" three thousand souls " were moved to repentance. And of 
these it is recorded, " All that believed were together, and 
had all things in common, and sold their possessions and 
goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." 
On this auspicious day the Jewish Apostolic Church, or gen- 
uine Christian church, under the inspiration and baptism 
of the Christ-spirit, began to exist. The communism was 
absolute. These newly baptized souls, full of fervor, were 
willing to surrender selfish ownership for the common good. 
Their principles were peace, purity, and " all things in com- 
mon," constituting the millennial church, the church of the 
ages. " Ekklesia" translated "church" means, literally,. 
" assembly." As understood apostolically, it implied a sym- 
pathizing assembly, convened and welded for a heavenly pur- 
pose. " Now there were in the church (ekklesia, assembly) 
that was at Antioch certain prophets " (Acts xiii. 1). These 
prophets, apostles, " women of Samaria," and believers gen- 
erally, quickened by the Christ-principle, constituted them- 
selves into spiritual families, brotherhoods, and communities 
holding " all things in common." " But," says one, " men nat- 
urally like to have their own." Granted ; and so some men 
naturally like to have their neighbors' ! Thieves are of this 
kind. But it is no more natural for thieves on a low physi- 
cal plane to steal, and misers to clutch and hoard, than for 
the philanthropic and spiritually-minded to adopt a broad, 
fraternal communism. The angelic in the heavens are cer- 
tainly communists. And I have yet to learn that spirits put 
patches of the summer-land into market, loan money, or 
speculate in corner-lots. When men pray, " Thy will be 
done on earth," why do they not go to work, and do it? 
Jesus came centuries ago. When is salvation coming ? 



FROM NEW ZEALAND ONWARD. 97 

THE CHINESE PRAYING FOR WIND. 

Our crew of Chinamen is a source of fruitful study. They 
have books aboard, and read them, when not playing at 
chance-games. Their heads are all shaven, save the pig-tail 
tuft. Rising in the morning, they clean their tongues by 
scraping them, and then sip their black tea. 

In the latitude of the trade-winds, we were sorely vexed 
with calms. It had been a dead calm under a scorching sun 
for five days. As Nature hates a vacuum, so do sailors a 
calm. Was there a remedy? On the sixth day, Sunday 
morning, at sunrise, there came on deck a dozen or more 
serious- visaged China passengers, with dishes of rice, bowls of 
tea, different colored paper, slim, dry incense-reeds, slender, 
red-topped wax-candles, and matches. " What's up ? '* 
inquired several. Just informed by the "mate," our reply 
was, " The Chinamen are going to pray for wind." Among 
the number who had come forward, was the Chinese doctor, 
and another grave-looking, shaven-headed individual, evi- 
dently endowed with some priestly function. Putting them- 
selves in position, they touched matches to the paper, 
throwing it overboard while in flames ; then, lighting their 
reeds and candles, they Avent through with certain pantomimic 
incantations, becoming their method of prayer, ending by 
throwing the rice and tea into the ocean. Result, a fine 
breeze soon from the right quarter. " There ! " exclaimed our 
exultant Celestials, " the wind-god has heard us ! " Why 
not just as rational for Chinamen to thus pray for wind, as 
for Christians bowing over cushioned pulpits to pray in their 
way for " rain," for the " staying of the grasshopper dev- 
astation," or the "recovery of the Prince of Wales"? 
True prayer is not lip-pleading, but silent aspiration. It 
affects suppliants, and inclines angels to listen, but does not 
shange the deific laws of the universe. 



98 ABOUND THE WORLD. 



THE SCIENCE OE SAILING. 



Navigation has reached a wonderful degree of perfection 
How soon will aeronauts sail through the atmosphere in 
safety ? Air-ships are sure to prove successes. The prin- 
ciple is perfectly understood in spirit-life. 

Our captain brings out his "sea-Bibles" each day, — the 
sextant, quadrant, and chronometer, for observations ; the 
thermometer, indicating the temperature ; the hygrometer, to 
show the degree of moisture in the air ; and the barometer, to 
mark its weight. These, locating positions, foretell approach- 
ing weather with great exactness. What a perfect system 
of circulation ! — the aerial wind-currents, and the briny cur- 
rents of the ocean. It is thrillingly interesting to watch 
storms at sea. By the way, the typhoons of the China Seas 
and the cyclones of the Indian Ocean have their fixed laws. 
When courses of steady winds are obstructed by islands, 
towering mountains, or other causes, producing whirling 
tempests termed typhoons, the wind takes a rotary motion, 
while the storm itself has a progressive motion. These 
spiral storms, following the law of gyration, sometimes move 
at the rate of fifty miles per hour. The typhoons prevail in 
the China Seas from June to October. Sailors dread these 
storms, and also the " pirate-junks " of Chinamen. The 
approach of a typhoon is indicated by rolling, uneven swells, 
the rapid sinking of the barometer, and reddish, hazy clouds 
deepening into purple and black. " No rules can be relied 
upon," says Capt. R. Mailler, "for the management of a 
vessel during these terrific tempests." " Give us sea-room," 
however, is the sailor's cry. 

THE NORTH STAR AND SOUTHERN CROSS. 

We are nearly under the equator. 

The stars, luminous lamps of heaven, are out each evening 
on parade. The nights are gorgeous. I sometimes picture 
the constellations as star-ships sailing on the ether-ocean of 



FROM NEW ZEALAND ONWARD. 99 

infinity. The clouds, white and crimson, are the coral-reefs, 
and the winds the breathings of God. 

Nearing the equator, on the voyage to Australia, I was 
thrilled with delight when catching the first glimpse of the 
Southern Cross glittering, in a peerless beauty all its own, 
just above the horizon in the south-west path of the Milky 
Way. Seeing churchmen thought of Calvary ; while scholars, 
more conversant with antiquity, talked of Oriental phallism. 
Getting near the equatorial circle again from the south, on 
this route northward to China, the cross was seen to be 
nightly receding ; and, at the same time, the Great Dipper was 
looming up from nearly the opposite direction. Two of its 
stars point to the North Star, not yet in sight. Most gladly 
shall I welcome the appearance again of the " pole-star," as 
it points in the direction of home and friends. 

I never tire, in these clear, tropical regions, of gazing at 
those mighty orbs, sailing through the ether-ocean of space, 
shedding their tremulous beams upon the restless waters. 

" I sit on the deck, and watch, the light fade 
Still fainter and fainter away in the west, 
And dream I can catch, through the mantling shade, 
A glimpse of the beautiful isles of the blest." 

See ! there is Orion, there Andromeda, there Sirius, 
brightest of the so-called fixed stars ; and there are the Ple- 
iades, Alcyon excelling in magnificence, and of which Homer 
sung nine hundred years B. C. Turn back in thought to the 
Chaldean shepherds who watched the waning moon from the 
plains of Shinar; study the astronomical observations re- 
corded in the East three thousand years ago, — and ask your- 
self, O modern! how much the intervening decades have 
added to the literature or general knowledge of the ancients. 

THE LOST DAY. 

Since sailing upon the Pacific westward, the question has 
been sprung, "Where does day begin?" The general 



100 AROUND THE WORLD. 

answer was, " Here, there, or at that place where the sun- 
beams first strike the earth during the twenty-four hours." 
The geographical and nautical answer is, " Day begins at 
the degree of longitude 180 east or west." Every school- 
boy knows, that, traveling round the world from east to west, 
a day is literally lost, and for the reason that there is a dif- 
ference of one hour for every fifteen degrees of longitude in 
each day. Accordingly, journeying westward, a certain 
length of time is added to each day ; and, making the 
world's circuit, — as many are doing at present, — would 
amount to an entire day. This is a puzzler to strict observ- 
ers of " sabbath days." When crossing the meridian 180% 
before reaching Auckland, New Zealand, our captain dropped 
from his reckonings the day we had lost ; and Sunday was 
this very lost day ! How queer, going to bed Saturday 
night, and getting up on Monday morning ! Invited by 
our fellow-passengers on " The Nevada," I lectured upon 
Spiritualism. 

But what a babyish notion, — this stress laid upon Sun- 
day, or Saturday, or any day, as especially " holy " ! Con- 
sidering the revolutions of our earth upon its axis, it is 
absolutely impossible for all its inhabitants to keep the 
" Christian sabbath " at the same time. If a party of Sec- 
ond Adventists, Seventh-Day Baptists, and Israelites should 
sail from San Francisco on Friday (the Mohammedan's 
sacred day of rest), circling the world, they would all be 
converts, willing or not, when reaching New York, keeping 
or observing the Christian's Sunday ! To a Spiritualist, all 
lands are equally holy, and all days are equally sacred. The 
observance, however, of one day in the seven for rest, recre- 
ation, and spiritual improvement, is eminently profitable. 

SPIRITUALISM IN THE FIJIS. 

This group of Pacific islands, numbering over two hun- 
dred, sighted by Capt. Cook, and discovered by the naviga- 
tor Tasman, has recently become somewhat famous with 



EKOM NEW ZEALAND ONWARD. 101 

Englislimen, because of its cotton-planting advantages. 
The climate is tropical. Naviti Levu is the most populous 
of the isles ; and Thakombau, a native six feet high, and 
kingly in bearing, is the most influential of the chiefs. 
Levuka, though having few natural advantages, is the prin- 
cipal commercial mart. Cotton, sugar, and coffee planters 
do well. Cocoanuts are abundant, and some wool is ex- 
ported. The ramie plant, or China-grass, samples of which 
I remember to have seen in New Orleans, grows finely in 
these islands. Cannibalism was practiced here till 1854. 
What Americans there are here, were originally from the 
Southern States. White men are in possession of three hun- 
dred and fifty thousand acres of these cotton and coffee 
growing lands. 

In a recent copy of " The Fiji Times," I find a labored 
article under this heading : " Spiritualism in Fiji." The 
writer, after speaking of the natives as " low and depraved 
in the moral scale," assures us that, "low and brutal" as 
they are, they " believe in a future state of existence, in 
apparitions, and the efficacy of charms ; " their " prophets 
profess to talk with the dead ; and they cure by striking the 
diseased part with the hand." This writer, treating of Spir- 
itualism among the European residents, says, " There is a 
deep interest, among the more thoughtful of our citizens, 
upon this important subject. . . . Those who believe, affirm 
that the phenomena throw new light upon the Scriptures, 
as well as demonstrate immortality." There is a " want 
among us," he further says, " of a good test medium." 

The Fijis may soon fall into the hands of the English. 

LONGINGS FOE THE LAND. 

And still a prisoner on this ocean clipper, — a vault, a 
charnel-house ; oh, how monotonous ! Nearly two months 
now at sea, utterly oblivious to all the doings and rushing 
activities of land-life ; and yet a loug distance from Hong 
Kong ! Each returning day brings fair skies or dripping 



102 



ABOUND THE WOULD. 



clouds, surging waves or dead calms, finny tribes, sailing 
sea-birds, chattering Chinamen, and stale, ship-scented food. 
Sea-birds, weary with flight, light in the rigging. The sail- 
ors pet them. Oh for the wings of — well, anything that 
would drop me down upon terra firma ! I term this, cabalis- 
tically, " concession " route. The luckless position is not 
without rich lessons ; the blue, unfathomed depths beneath, 
and the infinite expanse above, kindling the fires of the 
ideal, incite me to self-examination, to meditation, and hope- 
ful conceptions of a social state to be ultimately realized by 
all nations, — a peaceful state rivaling in moral excellence 
the Eden of the poets, and the Zion of the prophets. But 
to contemplation. 



CHAPTER X. 

A SERIES OF SEANCES UPON" THE OCEAN. 

A.MONG tlie beautiful thoughts of that celebrated German 
philosopher, Kant, are these : — 

" The day will come when it will be proved that the human soul is 
already, during its life on earth, in a close and indissoluble connection 
with a world of spirits; that their world influences ours, and impresses it 
profoundly ; and that we often remain unconscious of it as long as every 
thing goes right with us." 

Mediums, necessarily sensitive, are as well aware of this 
connection referred to by Kant, as thinkers are conscious 
that sound, healthy bodies, and clear, well-balanced minds, 
are requisites for the reception of high spiritual inspirations. 
Mediumship, a powerful mental stimulant, is largely fash- 
ioned by the controlling spirit-intelligences. Therefore, 
studying a medium's tastes and tendencies, through a term 
of years, is comprehending the characteristics and purposes 
of such spirits as influence and minister to the medium, or 
psychological subject. 

DELICACY OF CONDITIONS. 

It is becoming definitely understood that Spiritualism in 
its phenomenal aspects is a science controlled by laws as fixed 
and absolute as those that govern the motions of physical 
bodies. All of Nature's forces are exceedingly subtle. 
Therefore, in every branch of research, compliance with 
conditions is indispensable ; and these conditions must "je 



104 



AROUND THE WORLD. 



thought out and experimented upon, until they can be for 
mulated. Then they are ready for future service. 

Physicists understand the delicacy of the conditions they 
impose. It is said that Dr. Kane, while wintering in the 
extreme polar regions, discovered that three thermometers, 
agreeing at medium temperatures, disagreed materially at 
very low temperatures, though suspended near together. 
Approaching them suddenly from the windward side 
affected them. Also a breath, and even the electric emana- 
tions of the body, would cause fluctuations, and accordingly 
incorrect readings. The common surveyor, using a deli- 
cately balanced compass, need not be informed that bodies 
of iron and steel affect his needle. The presence of a 
pocket-knife sometimes vitiates results. Sea-captains, using 
mercury for an artificial horizon in sextant observations, 
know that a footfall, a loud word, or a quick motion of the 
body, causes an oscillation of the quicksilver, and necessa- 
rily incorrect calculations. Alpine travelers tell us, that, on 
ascending Mont Blanc, strata of snow are held in such won- 
derful poise that a violent exclamation would precipitate 
a thousand tons clown the declivity. Returning, a few years 
since, from Pompeii and Herculaneum to the Museum in 
Naples, I there saw vast rolls of calcined papyri cov- 
ered with legible writing, though nearly two thousand 
years buried ; and a quiet gentleman, with repressed 
breath and dexterous fingers, identifying, lifting, or un- 
rolling those long-interred evidences of literary wealth 
and historic record. A breath might have reduced these 
chaired leaflets to an impalpable powder. Success lay only 
in the most delicate manipulations. If compliance with con- 
ditions are so indispensable, then, in dealing with physical 
bodies, with known phenomena, — how much more so when 
investigating partially unknown phenomena, involving the 
laws of psychic force, and the momentous subject of spirit- 
ual manifestations ! Mediums, sensitive and highly impres- 
sional, are in circles infinitely more susceptible than Kane's 



A SERIES OF SEANCES UPON THE OCEAN. 105 

thermometers. A harsh "word, a disagreeable odor, the sud- 
den opening of a door, the introduction of a certain indi- 
vidual into the stance, — these, and other disturbing causes., 
may destroy all the conditions necessaiy for the influx of 
thoughts and ideas from that ethereal world of spirits. 

TEACHINGS OF SPIRITS. 

The following communications, and many others through 
the unconscious mediumship of Dr. E. C. Dunn, were 
received during four-o'clock sittings in our stateroom when 
the conditions of the treacherous ocean would permit. 
They were generally given in answer to questions ; though, 
for want of space, the inquiries are usually omitted. 

The spirit Aaron Knight, controlling one afternoon, coolly 
remarked, " I see that my years of labor with you have not 
produced a very luxuriant harvest." 

" How so, Mr. Knight ? " 

" Well, approaching your sphere a while since, I heard 
you remark that you had only a slight, or, rather, no posi- 
tive knowledge, of spirit-life and its peculiar conditions." 

" True ; but I referred to daily objective knowledge." 

" Metaphysical terms are of little avail. You have heard 
my voice frequently for years. You have felt our magnet- 
ism upon your brain. You have inhaled the fragrance of 
spirit-flowers. You have had things borne to you through 
the nimosphere. You have been made spasmodic when 
alone, by our electric touch. You have seen spirit-forms 
improvised, and then vanish from sight. These, with such 
confirmatory witnesses as consciousness, intuition, and 
reason, ought to have given you positive knowledge. ." 

" Well, let that pass. Do you hear all I say ? " 

" No, not necessarily ; but then I could, if desirable, 
know all you said ; and, further, could know your very 
thoughts, inasmuch as they produce a reflex action readable 
•by your attending circle. And, what is still more recondite, 
the effects of your thoughts, aims, and plans are spiritually 



106 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

photographed in the sphere you will inhabit when released 
from mortality. You have no secrets. It would be well if 
all men thoroughly understood this." 

" Are you now within this stateroom ? " 

" I am, and others also. We have so fixed the atmos- 
phere, that, if not congenial, it is endurable." 

But some clairvoyants tell us that spirits seldom return to 
earth, to dwell in our midst even for a moment. 

" Can you conceive or imagine any thing that clairvoyants 
and psychological sensitives have not taught ? The truth 
is, millions of spirits have never got away from the earth, 
spiritually speaking. Their past tendencies, present desires, 
and undone work, chain, mentally hold them near to your 
earth. Those more advanced, who have passed to the 
heavenly abodes of the divine life, can return at will ; while 
very ancient spirits seldom visit earth, and then only for the 
holiest purposes." 

seance n. 

How long a time has man inhabited the earth ? 

" Time — indefinite term ! Nations of antiquity reck- 
oned time by the revolutions of constellations, by the dis- 
appearance and return of comets, by the sun and moon ; 
and others less ancient by kingly dynasties. It is difficult 
to even approximate the period when man first appeared on 
earth. The most ancient spirits with whom I have con- 
versed upon the subject tell me it was millions of years in 
the past. Three times, at least, the earth has been nearly 
submerged in water, destroying the people. The whole 
surface has been repeatedly changed and modified by fire 
and flood, heat and cold. Fossilized elephants and other 
tropical animals are often unearthed in the frigid zones, 
proving that those ice-belted regions were once tropical and 
even equatorial in temperature. 

" Present man, with the shattered remnants of his primeval 
civilization, originated in the southern zones more than fifty 



A SERIES OF SEANCES UPON THE OCEAN. 107 

thousand years since. There are traditions and legends 
extending back full forty thousand years. Types are per- 
manent. Vegetation there was perennial. Fruits grew 
spontaneous. Tilling the earth was unnecessary. To reach 
up, pluck, and eat, was the only requisite. From Southern 
Asia there were radiations east, west, and north, peoplmg 
foreign lands. After a series of centuries, the Northmen, 
increased in numbers, and warlike, swept down into Central 
and Southern Asia. Wars crimsoned hills and mountains. 
The conquerors drove their vanquished foes into that coun- 
try now known as Hindostan. They were hunters and 
herdsmen, leading roving lives. Peoples making a second 
descent from the rich table-lands of Asia into India gath- 
ered into communities, establishing petty kingly govern- 
ments. These were denominated Aryans." 

SEANCE HI. 

..." Be punctual to the appointed time of meeting us. 
Remember that our avocations and appointments are quite 
as important as yours. . . . Prophecies are often fulfilled 
by the prophets. I remember of saying to you, in my 
earliest conversations, that the medium and yourself would 
be mutual helps, traveling together, even to making the 
circuit of the globe. . . . Preceding him to spirit-life, you 
will impress and entrance him with perfect ease because of 
your earthly associations social and spiritual." . . . 

Could you go directly through our globe ? 

" Possibly ; although, from having no desire, I have 
never made the attempt." 

If you were to go, when leaving the medium, to my home 
in Hammonton, America, would you take the short cut 
straight through the earth ? 

" No : I should pass above the surface of sea and land. 
This would be the more feasible route. Solid matter, so 
called, forms little or no obstruction to the movements of 
spirits-. But gross matter, remember, is interpermeated with 



108 AROUND THE WORLD. 

etherealized spirit-substance ; and then, there might be 
emanations from spirit-strata and various entities, prevent- 
ing or at least impeding the passage. The walls of a room 
may be so surcharged with magnetism and spirit-auras that 
a spirit can not pass them. There are gradations of spirit- 
substance as of matter. When you are in your library-room, 
we fix an atmosphere about you, and so infill the walls of 
your study-room with our positive magnetic spheres that 
intruding spirits can not enter." 

seance rv. 

. . . •' If angel lips are portals to the palace of wisdom, 
angelic beings are modest and unassuming. Whenever you 
hear a spirit talk about himself, — what mighty things he did 
on earth, and what he has done in the supernal spheres, — 
put it down that the brother is but a pupil in the primary 
department of immortality. High and pure spirits are dis- 
inclined to even give their names. And there is nothing 
more repellant to an exalted spirit, than to refer to himself. 
In a congress of spirits, I once heard a spirit of sage-like 
appearance say he had sometimes thought that loss of 
memory would be a great blessing, thus forgetting self. 
Selfishness is the root of all the cankering vices of the age. 
... A mortal, reaching the better land of immortality, 
gravitates, or seeks the plane of his choice, something as the 
immigrant in a new country looks for highlands or low- 
lands, cultivated fields or heavy-timbered forests; but a 
spirit, owing to the condition of the spiritual body and other 
considerations, can not become a permanent resident of a 
higher plane than he is spiritually prepared for. . . . The 
desires, or, rather, the demands of the carnal nature, such as 
gluttony, and sexual intercourse, do not obtain in the spirit- 
ual world. These fleshly and animal appetites are laid aside 
at death. And yet low, undeveloped spirits, from force of 
habit, vividness of memory, or downward tendencies ac- 
quired on earth, may enjoy the sight of lasciviousness ; or, 



A SERIES OF SEANCES UPON THE OCEAN. 109 

for some scheming wicked purpose, may psychologically 
lead mediums into debauchery and the ' unfruitful works 
of darkness.' Low, selfish, disorderly spirits are at the 
bottom of the ' free-lust movement,' known by the n ore 
attractive term, ' social freedom.' This scum, now floating 
upon the peaceful stream of spirit-communion, will ere long 
settle away into merited oblivion." 

seance v. 

You speak of conditions and employments in the spirit- 
world : I wish you would be more minute in your descrip- 
tions. 

" Hoping to enlighten, I will try. The spirit-world, real 
and substantial, is the counterpart of your world. The 
earthly life is rudimentary and preparatory. The wise of 
earth ripen up, while in their bodies, for higher planes of 
existence. As to 'discreet degrees,' referred to by the 
admirers of the Swedish seer, they do not exist per se. The 
phrase ' discreet degrees ' should give place to ' states ' and 
4 conditions ' of being. Logically understood, the spirit- 
world is all space, because essential spirit fills all immensity. 
Inhabitants leaving your earth by death occupy the atmos- 
phere immediately surrounding it, — many of them, at least, 
for ages. They can in time occupy other places and spheres. 
The difficulty in passing to remote spaces and regions is at 
the medial points of conjunction between different planets 
and systems. Each planet, and system of planets, have their 
physical, gaseous, ethereal, electrical, and spiritual atmos- 
pheres. In these atmospheres abound the centripetal and 
centrifugal forces ; and these forces hold a similar relation 
to spiritual beings that the physical forces do to human 
beings. Therefore they encounter kindred difficulties in 
passing and repassing the aural atmospheres, and different 
strata, of the interstellar spaces, that mortals do in exploring 
pathless oceans, or aeronauts in their air-ship expeditions. 

" In the belts that encircle your earth, the grosser lie the 



HO AROUND THE WORLD. 

Qearest to it. The more refined extend outward into the 
ethereal regions. Coarse spiritual natures inhabit the outer 
surfaces of the inner belts ; while t^e more refined and spir- 
itual of earth pass on, by virtue «>f their refinement and 
purity, to remote and those more beautiful belts in astral 
spaces. The lower spheral belts, partaking of the earthli- 
ness of the earth, and embodying the grosser of the spiritual 
elements, abound in things similar to earth-life, such as lawns 
and lowlands, fields and swamps, insects and animals. The 
inhabitants are likened unto these conditions. Here the 
worldly and the sordid have taken up their abodes. Awak- 
ening to consciousness, from the event termed death, they 
found they had entered the new plane of existence mentally 
and morally as they had left mortality. This realization was 
at first exceedingly gratifying. Activity is natural to all 
spheres. In this first spheral zone, the selfish find a satis- 
faction in the gratification of their desires and tendencies. 
Those who loved sport, and low theatrical amusements, here 
find means for their enjoyment. Misers seek and clutch 
money. Greedy landholders find broad acres. Speculators 
traffic in spiritual estates. Gamblers engage in games of 
chance ; and here, too, deceivers and tricksters ply their wily 
arts during long periods of time. It is their choice. They 
prefer these groveling planes, because satisfying their de- 
sires in connection with the influences they are able to exert 
over the mediumistic of earth. ... It should be remem- 
bered, then, that shrewd, scheming spirits of the lower 
spheres cast a powerful psychological influence upon earth's 
inhabitants ; and that miserly fathers, influencing, often 
intensify the selfishness of their sons by pointing out rich 
mineral beds, and otherwise aiding them in earthly specula- 
tions, which, eventually culminating in hoarded wealth, must 
be followed ultimately by remorse and deepest suffering. " 



A SERIES OF SEANCES UPON THE OCEAN. m 

SEANCE VI. 

What have you been doing in spirit-life to-day, friend 
Knight? 

" Accompanied by a sympathizing band of philanthropists, 
I have been teaching the truly repentant how to make repa- 
ration for wrongs done on earth ; the ignorant and supersti- 
tious, how to rise out of their darkened spiritual conditions. 
. . . There are no arbitrary barriers to coarser, undevel- 
oped spirits passing to the outer and higher zones of per- 
petual joy. It is only a law of adaptation that attracts, 
chains, them to the plane of then own preferences. Clair- 
voyants who speak of a summer-land only in spirit-exist- 
ence, convey an erroneous idea. There are summer-land 
surfaces on the outer belts, freighted and dotted with mag- 
nificent forests, fountains, fields, fruits, gardens, and flowers, 
of the exquisite beauty of which mortals have no conception ; 
and there are dark winter-lands too, corresponding to the cold, 
selfish, and perverted natures of those dwelling on earth. 

" The lower, grosser planes of spirit-existence necessitate 
animal life ; not the individualized spirits of your animals, but 
the legitimate productions of the sphere in which they exist; 
something as the birds and animals of your physical earth 
are its natural productions. As you pass outward and 
upward through almost measureless spaces, you find less of 
animal life, till in the celestial spheres there are no animal 
forms whatever. This might suggest a question relating to 
the unhappiness of certain spirits if deprived of pet animals. 
If unhappy for this reason, it would only prove that they 
were yet clogged and tainted with earthly tastes and ten- 
dencies. Angelic affections do not flow out to animals. 
This explanation harmonizes the seemingly different state- 
ments of clairvoyants ; and, more particularly, those who 
pass out of their bodies, traversing spirit-spheres. Some 
while thus disinthralled, save by the silken cord of magnetic 
life, beheld animals of a low type, others of a high type, 



112 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

and others still none whatever. Briefly stated, they de- 
scribed such conditions and localities as they had explored. 
In all the planes and states of infinity, there'ti a marvelous 
adaptation of means to ends. If discord is the child of the 
hells, order reigns in the heavens. . . . Grossness of con- 
dition, referring not alone to the spiritual body, holds a 
direct relation to the mind, alias, the inner spiritual nature, 
and the influences proceeding therefrom. Coarse, selfish 
organizations in spirit-life eliminate coarse auras and influ- 
ences, tending to deception and vice; while those in high 
celestial spheres, having more refined spiritual bodies, and 
more intellectual and spiritual natures, generate conditions 
of harmony and purity. These revel in the golden sunlight 
of perpetual love and happiness. The life that each leads 
on earth prepares him for the sphere of his own moral like- 
ness. These spheres — heavens and hells — were vaguely 
described by the seers of antiquity. All modern theological 
doctrines are but the shadows that the ancient cast." 

" These spheres, or zoe-ether zones, related to, sail with, the 
earth in her revolutions through space. Some spirits take 
up their immediate abode just above their former homes, 
casting upon them a powerful psychological influence. 
Miserly spirits linger about their vaults ; and others, disor- 
derly, and maliciously inclined, cling to their previous locali- 
ties, producing magnetic conditions suitable for haunting 
houses, for producing obsessions, insanity, and nervous dis- 
eases." 

seance vn. 

" Remember that in the lower spheres are found the coun- 
terparts of your earth, — its follies and vices, its labors and 
pursuits, prompted by natural desires ; and spirits here, as 
mortals with you, are subject to disappointments and fail- 
ures ; while in the heavens love, — love devoid of all selfish- 
ness, is the motive that inspires action. Here harmonial 
spirits reap a rich reward in leading the aspirational into the 



A SERIES OF SEANCES UPON THE OCEAN. 113 

paths of purity, in laboring unselfishly for the good of others 
and in pointing those who will listen to the " tree of life," 
that ever buds, blossoms, and bears immortal fruitage. This 
is to them satisfaction, true rest, heaven ! Considering the 
condition of those in the lower spheres of moral darkness, 
you see that it is infinitely preferable for mortals to prepare, 
while on earth, for the higher life, that at death, so called, 
they may avoid the planes of pride, passion, and perversions, 
that, with their seeming gains and joys, bring to their pos- 
sessors, in the end, mental grief and deepest despair. 

" Passing from this first spheral belt outward, we pass dif- 
ferent gradations of indulgence, vice, and discontent, — out- 
ward and upward, till we reach etherealized planes of spirit- 
uality, where resurrected souls have no desire to engage in 
activities beneath themselves. These heavenly inhabitants 
have become baptized into a celestial life of love, with 
desires only for the cultivation of the spiritual ; quite forget- 
ting the things beneath, and seeking the ideal of perfection, 
which must ever lie in the infinite beyond. 

" The intermediate spheres between the two just described 
abound in all the employments and associations conceivable. 
There is the scholarly plane, where all else is sacrificed to 
intellectual research ; the musical, and the poetic ; and 
the inventive, where all things are made subservient to the 
genius of mechanism, thus sacrificing much that is higher 
and more divinely beautiful. And there, too, is the domestic 
plane, where abound the attractions of family and family 
associations, with the narrow and selfish love for one's own 
offspring. Family love, as opposed to universal love, is a 
serious impediment to unfoldment of the soul. 'Complete 
happiness is attained by sacrificing present ease, by forget- 
fulness of self, in labor for others' good. Those thus toiling 
mold angels from their own forms. 

" In the more exalted states of existence, it is considered 
that an equalizing and harmonizing of the mental and moral 
faculties indicate an approach to the Christ-sphere of im- 



114 AROUND THE WORLD. 

mortality, where we have the highest form of the perfected 
spiritual being. In advancing from this high moral stand- 
point to diviner altitudes, extending above and still beyond, 
souls are intromitted into the sphere of virgin purity and 
love ; the sphere of spiritual balance, properly denominated 
the holy ; the Christ-sphere of angelic purity, where the 
spiritual brain-organs, subjecting and over-arching, crown all 
the others with a matchless glory." 



CHAPTER XL 

THE CHINESE ORIENT. 

" When thou haply seest 
Some rare, noteworthy object in thy travels, 
"Wish me partaker of thy happiness." — Shakspkark. 

All nations are brothers. Hong Kong, a rough border- 
island of the Flowery Land, has been under British control 
since 1842. It is properly an English colony, though the 
people are mostly Chinamen. The sweeping distance we 
traversed from the southern portion of New Zealand to 
•China was nearly seven thousand miles, meeting necessarily 
with islands, coral shoals, calms, tempests, burning equato- 
rial suns, — many bitter experiences ! The passage occupied 
over two months. 

I became heart-sick of hearing the guttural gabble, and of 
looking at our China passengers, with their inevitable cues 
dangling from their crowns, their shaven heads, almond- 
shaped eyes, flat noses, high cheek-bones, saffron-colored 
complexions, and sack-like clothing loosely, awkwardly 
hung around them. Being from different portions of China, 
they had among themselves one serious fight, using clubs, 
bits of wood, and marline-pins, the blood flowing freely for a 
few moments. While censuring, I must not forget that 
these are coolies, — the poorer classes. 

Steaming up the harbor, and landing at Hong Kong, we 
leaped into a " sam-pan," — a small Chinese skiff, partially 
roofed with bamboo. There were seven residents in this 



116 AROUND THE WORLD. 

junk-shaped boat, — the youngest, a child, strapped to the 
mother's back, Indian fashion. Both grandmother and 
mother aided in rowing the " sam-pan." These families 
know no other homes. 

Hong Kong, in the Chinese language, means " Incense 
Harbor ; " referring to the junks and proas, that here dis- 
charge their cargoes of fragrant spices. 

THE FIRST OUTLOOK. 

The city is crowded. The country presents every con- 
ceivable shade of landscape, — rich valleys, alluvial plains,, 
high table-lands, and magnificent mountains. Stretching 
along the coast-cities, canals, to quite an extent, take the 
place of roads. Instead of locks, they have what are termed 
"mud-slides," using cables of bamboo, and windlasses. 
Men, instead of machinery, turn them. Multitudes are- 
born, eat, sleep, live, and die in these boats. Every thing 
looks un-American. The people are mainly agricultural,, 
cultivating almost every available foot of the soil. Every 
object seen indicates an overburdened population. The 
canals swarm with boats, the shops with artisans, the roads 
with pedestrians, and the fields with hard-toiling workmen. 
It is work or starve in China. 

The empire proper has eighteen provinces, each of which 
is divided into about ten divisions called Fu; and these are 
still further divided into Hien. Politically speaking, these 
correspond somewhat to our districts, counties, towns, only 
they are much larger than with us in America. The empire 
contains five millions of square miles. Each provincial cap- 
ital averages about one million of inhabitants. The great 
Chinese Empire numbers nearly five hundred millions, — one- 
third of the whole human race. It has one thousand seven- 
hundred walled cities. 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 117 

china's PAST HISTORY. 

Humiliating as it maybe to Europe, it is true, that, for 
a period of nearly three thousand years, China existed in 
almost complete isolation from other portions of the globe. 
This made her arrogant and egotistic. During those mediae- 
val times known as the " dark ages," the very existence of 
China was unknown to Europeans. The Chinese themselves 
knew nothing of the term " China." Speaking of their coun- 
try, they denominated it Chung KtvoTi, the Middle Kingdom, 
or Chung-Hivo-Kivoh, the Middle Flowery Kingdom ; because 
they consider themselves as occup} r ing the middle of the 
globe, and as being the centers of civilization and intelli- 
gence. They further believe that their empire, once proud 
and world-commanding, was established by the " law of 
Heaven " over forty thousand years ago, and is destined to 
stand for ever. Owing to national conceit, Western nations 
call them " Celestials." 

The almost measureless antiquity of China is not- denied. 
The point in dispute is as to the boundary-line between the 
genuinely historic and the mythological. Of this, Chinese 
scholars are certainly the best judges. Meadows, in his 
elaborate work upon the Chinese, puts the reign of Fuh-hi 
B. C. 3327. The reign of the Chow dynasties began about 
one thousand years before Christ, during which Lau-tsze 
and Confucius lived. Though Lau-tsze was the oldest, born 
B. C. 604, they were cotemporaries. Both of these philoso- 
phers, referring to the wise who lived before them, term them 
" the ancients." 

Herodotus and Ptolemy, treating of this quite unknown 
country, referred to these isolated people living in the north- 
east of Asia as "inventive and prosperous." Marcellinus 
the Roman writer, Virgil, Pliny, Tacitus, and other histo- 
rians, mention these olive-colored people under the name of 
Seres, dwelling in the land of Serica. They speak of them 
as "rich in silks " and the " luxuries of life," besides being 
cumbered with " much useless lore." 



118 ABOUND THE WOULD. 

The " Chinese annals " give their nationality an antiquity 
so marvelously vast, that seetarists sneer. This is a too 
oommon argument with the ignorant and the impudent. A 
learned Chinaman, Le Can, assured me that Confucian 
scholars put their reliable historic records relating to the 
creation back full forty-four thousand years ago. The can- 
did and scholarly John Williams, in his " Observations on 
Comets," admits the accuracy of the Chinese chronological 
computations. In his investigations he shows, from the 
" records in the Shu-King, one of the oldest historical docu- 
ments of the empire, that the star Cor Hydroz culminating 
at sunset on the day of the vernal equinox, in the time of 
Tau, the sun must have been in Taurus, then the equinoctial 
point. By a simple calculation, Tau can be shown to have 
lived four thousand one hundred and seventy-six years ago, 
or two thousand three hundred B. C. ; just after the disper- 
sion from Babel, according to the common chronology." . . . 
Dr. Hales long ago pointed out the agreements of the Egyp- 
tians and Chinese with the Babylonian or Chaldean astro- 
nomical observations. 

THE ANCIENT NAMES OP CHINA. 

The primitive inhabitants of Southern Asia, speaking of 
the people now known as the Chinese, used the terms, Jin, 
Chin, Sin, and Sinistae ; referring, evidently, to the Tsin dy- 
nasty, which took absolute control of the northern portion 
of the country about 770 B.C. Being ambitious and power- 
ful, this Tsin family wielded the scepter over the whole 
empire as early as 250 B.C. This period, and. several hun- 
dred years previous, was famed for its literary men. The 
prominence of Tsin, and the dimmed records of travelers, 
confirm the view taken by learned commentators, that the 
Chinese were referred to in the forty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, 
— " Behold, thou shalt come from afar, . . . and those from 
the land of Sinim" Classic writers described the country 
under the names, Sinse, Seres, Serica. An Alexandrine 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 119 

monk, writing in the sixth century, called it Tzinistse, which 
much resembles the Persian appellation, Chinistan. The 
Turks and Russians knew it as Khitai. The Khitans were 
of Nanchu lineage, and related to the present imperial fam- 
ily. In the tenth century they completely conquered the 
adjoining provinces. From about this period, or before, 
strange as it may seem, Europe became utterly oblivious of 
any such great civilized nation in the East. But in the year 
1245, John of Piano Carpini, a native of Umbria, and an- 
other Franciscan monk, wandering along the Mongolian 
desert, found their way into Eastern Asia ; and, returning from 
their mission, told of a highly-civilized people living in the 
extreme East, upon the shores of the ocean. To this coun- 
try, so unexpectedly found, they gave the name of Cathay. 
One of these monks describes them thus : — 

" The Cathayans are a Pagan people, who have a written character 
of their own. They are learned in many things. They worship the one 
God, and have sacred scriptures. . . . They have no beard, and in their 
features are very much like the Mongols, but not so broad in the face. 
They have a peculiar language. Better craftsmen, in all the arts prac- 
ticed by mankind, are not to be found on the face of the earth. Their 
country, also, is very rich in corn, in wine, gold, silver, and in silk, and 
in all other things that tend to human maintenance." 

EAELY EFFORTS TO CHRISTIANIZE THE CHINESE. 

Portuguese missionaries reaching China by doubling the 
Cape of Good Hope, near the close of the fifteenth century, 
despaired of converting self-willed Chinamen to Christianity ; 
because, said these Romish zealots, " They have a God of 
their own. Burning incense, they worship their ancestors. 
They also hold converse with spirits, using the black art, and 
think that the original tendency of man's heart is to do right." 

De Rubruquis, an intelligent monk, was the first to iden- 
tify, in 1253, Cathay with the ancient Seres or Sinim. In 
1295 Friar John went on a mission to China. Writing to 
Rome, he says, — 



120 AROUND THE WORLD. 

"I have bought gradually one hundred and fifty boys, the children of 
Pagan parents, who had never learned any religion. These I have bap- 
tized, and taught Greek and Latin after our manner ; also I have written 
out psalters for them, with thirty hymnaries and two breviaries. . . . 
And I have a place in court, and a regular entrance, and seat assigned 
me as legate of our Lord the Pope ; and the Cham honors me above all 
other prelates, whatever be their titles." 

All early travelers to this Asian country were stars of the 
second magnitude, however, compared to the Venetian, 
Marco Polo; and yet for a long time he was counted a 
romancer. This injustice ultimately died away ; and this gen- 
tleman's veracity, and correctness of observation, shine bril- 
liantly to-day under the recovery of much lost and forgotten 
knowledge. His descriptions of cities, libraries, civilization, 
and the general refinement of the people, read to Western 
nations like fairy-tales. He was the great traveler of his 
age. 

Hon. Anson Burlingame, head of the Chinese embassy to 
our and" other countries, said, in his speech delivered in New 
York, June, 1868, — 

" China is a land of scholars and of schools ; a land of books, from 
the smallest pamphlet up to voluminous encyclopedias. It is a land 
where privileges are common. It is a land without caste; for they 
destroyed their feudal system over two thousand years ago, and they built 
up their grand structure of civilization on the great idea that the people 
are the source of power. This idea was uttered by Mencius between two 
and three thousand years since, and it was old when he uttered it. . . . 
They make scholarship a test of merit." 

HONG KONG TO CANTON. 

If not original, the Chinese are certainly unique. Hong 
Kong has a population of one hundred and twenty-five thou- 
sand, about four thousand of whom are Europeans and 
Americans. The buildings are roofed with tiles. The 
streets, narrow and dirty, swarm like beehives. All nation- 
alities dress to suit themselves. Nearly every Chinaman has 
an umbrella over his head, and a fan in his hand. They are 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 121 

compelled by law to carry a hand-lamp, if traversing the 
streets after seven o'clock. Only a portion of the women — 
the better classes — have small feet. These, in walking, 
simply waddle as though lame. They think it graceful. 

After visiting the Chinese temples, hospitals, foundling 
institutions, and riding upon men's shoulders in sedan- 
chairs, — a method of locomotion to us as distasteful as unnat- 
ural, — we took the steamer for Canton. The native name 
is Tang-Ching, meaning "the city of rams;" but from sub- 
sequent mythological circumstances connected with the wise 
men of the past, and their communion with the gods, it now 
signifies " the city of genii." Thronging with a population 
of over a million, it numbers less than two hundred foreign- 
ers. The city is situated on the Pearl River, up the country 
some ninety miles from Hong Kong. The river, wide, 
muddy, and moderate, reminding one of the lazy Missouri, 
flows into the bay at Hong Kong, just under the shadow of 
Victoria Peak, a mountainous point, towering up nearly two 
thousand feet above the level of the sea. The flat lands ali 
along this river were covered with rice-fields, banana planta- 
tions, ly-chee trees laden with ripening fruit, peach-orchards 
full of promise, and banyan shrubbery, more ornamental in 
this latitude than useful. Odd-looking villages, lying a little 
distance away, dotted the river valley. These are more 
noted for compactness and bustle, than cultivation or beauty. 
The most important of these minor cities, commercially con- 
sidered, is Whampoa, — virtually the port of Canton, — being 
just at the head of navigation for heavily-laden vessels. 
Seen from the steamer, agriculture and architecture seemeci 
decidedly primitive. The buildings were generally one story 
high, and covered with tiles, — no glass in the windows, nor 
gardens in front of them. Back in the fields, men and 
women were plowing their half-submerged rice-lands with 
water-buffaloes. These huge, hairless creatures are consid- 
erably larger than our wild droves of the West. Butter 
made from their milk is white as lard. These buffalo-cows, 



122 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

with others, and goats also, are driven to the door to be 
milked, thus avoiding the city pests of impure milk. 

CANTON WITHIN THE WALLS. 

Approach to this, the wealthiest and most elegant city of 
China, seemed almost impossible, from the wilderness of 
skiffs, " sam-pans," and junks plying the muddy waters. 
These junks, clumsily modeled, yet richly decorated, have 
bamboo sails, and are better adapted to inland harbor and 
river purposes than European-rigged vessels. Full two hun- 
dred thousand Cantonese live, traffic, eat, sleep, and die on 
these river-boats. Their sam-pans, though floating property, 
are their real estate. The smallest children have bamboo- 
blocks tied to their bodies, so that, should they tumble over- 
board, they could be easily rescued. Landing, and presenting 
letters of introduction from the Rev. Dr. Eitel, and our gen- 
tlemanly and kind-hearted consul Mr. Bailey, appointed 
to Hong Kong from Cincinnati, and, by the way, a distant 
relation, his maternal grandparent being a Peebles, we were 
made the recipients of the Rev. Dr. Kerr's hospitalities. 

The streets of Canton, irregularly laid out, are from five 
to seven and ten feet wide, and generally covered in with 
fluttering matting and bamboo-reeds, giving them a dull, shad- 
owy appearance. Broad avenues are yet to be dreamed of 
by Chinamen. Wheeled carriages out of the question, sedan- 
chairs carried by coolies are the only means of transporta- 
tion. It pained me to see that the shoulders of some of these 
poor burden-bearers were calloused and scarred. The prin- 
cipal streets, with such lofty names as " Pure Pearl," " Just 
Balance," "Unblemished Rectitude Street," &c, have ban- 
ners and gaudily painted signs dangling in front of their 
bazaars, presenting an aspect at once gay and gorgeous. 
China has a million of temples. The emperor's temple is 
magnificent. Only imperial buildings have yellow tiles. Can- 
ton's guardian god sits majestically in the city temple. The 
Confucian temples have images of Confucius. There are few 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 123 

places more frequented that the Temple of the Five Genii. 
In this, and the Temple of Horrors, daily congregate magi- 
cians, diviners, and fortune-tellers, spiritual quacks. Sam- 
un-Kung is a Tauist temple ; while Hok-hoi-tong is a hall to 
encourage literary men "by granting prizes for the best com- 
positions. There are a hundred and twenty-five temples in 
Canton. 

The viceroy, the highest civil officer, is appointed from 
Pekin for the term of three years. Chinese lawyers have 
no fees ; and yet, when gaining the suit through marked 
ability, they accept presents. 

The native dispensary, located in the eighteenth ward, 
employs three Chinese physicians, besides providing support 
for widows, coffins for the poor, and funds for the support 
of free schools. Penalties for treason are rigidly severe. 
During nine months of the provincial rebellion, in 1855, 
fifty thousand rebels were beheaded on the " execution- 
grounds," in the southern suburbs of Canton. 

China had homes for the aged, asylums for the blind, found- 
ling hospitals, and retreats for lame and worn-out animals, 
long before missionary feet touched their soil. Streets lead- 
ing from the city of Canton into the countay should, after a 
few miles out, be called paths. Poorly paved, if at all, they 
range from three to seven feet wide. Canals are really the 
thoroughfares of the country .- 

CHINESE AS THEY WERE AND ARE. 

Cycles are certainties, pertaining alike to individuals and 
nations. China had her noonday of prosperity many thou- 
sands of years ago. To-day, and for centuries, she has been 
in a galloping decline. In that indefinite period known as 
antiquity, she rightly considered herself the superior race, 
the center of civilization and learning. It must not be for- 
gotten by Americans that the Chinese were adepts in astron- 
omy and medicine over two thousand years since ; that they 
employed the magnetic needle when Europe was smothering 



124 AROUND THE WORLD. 

under the pall of the dark ages ; that printing, originating 
with, was used by them for centuries before kncwn in the 
"West; that they discovered electro-magnetism, the curse 
gunpowder, and that they have excelled in silks, china- 
wares, and porcelains from time immemorial. It should 
be further borne in mind that the Chinese inoculated for the 
small-pox nearly three thousand years before the Christian 
era, putting the virus in the nostril instead of the arm ; and 
that a medical work published prior to Christ's time, 
during the Hau dynasty, treats in part of the circulation of 
the blood. 

Chinese scholars are proud of their past. They admit 
that "Western barbarians" excel them, at present, in science 
and the mechanical arts ; but they claim the pre-eminence 
in literature, metaphysics, and the mysterious sciences, 
such as ontology, geomancy, physiognomy, divination, and 
necromancy, or methods of conversing with the dead. 

During the tedious voyage from New Zealand with a crew 
of Chinese, I was surprised one day to see a young coolie 
perusing a fine old Chinese volume, thickly embellished 
with pictures and plates of the human form, the human 
brain laid open, the curves and facial features indicating 
character delicately marked, and the fortune-lines of the 
hand clearly traced. Inquiring through the interpreter 
when written, and by whom, I ascertained that it was one 
of a series of volumes by an ancient sage, treating of read- 
ing character by the brain-organs, the facial angles, and the 
general contour of the person, alias a volume upon phrenol- 
ogy and physiognomy. 

It can not be consistently alleged that Christian missiona- 
ries would be partial to, or inclined to overrate, the virtues 
and intellectual altitudes of the "heathen" they were sent 
to save. And yet the Rev. J. L. Nevius, ten years a mis- 
sionary in China, says in his work entitled " China and the 
Chinese," " China may well point with pride to her authen- 
tic history, reaching back through more than thirty cen- 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 125 

fruries ; to her extensive literature, containing many works 
of sterling and permanent value ; to her thoroughly elaboi- 
ated language, possessed of a remarkable power of expression ; 
to her list of scholars, and her proficiency in belles-lettres. 

" If these," says Dr. Nevius, " do not constitute evidences 
of intellectuality, it would be difficult to say where such 
evidences might be found." Further, China has given a 
literature to nearly forty millions of Japanese, and also to 
the inhabitants of Corea and Manchuria. If the Japanese 
surpass the Chinese in skill and impulsive action, the Chi- 
nese excel them in intellectuality and morality. The better 
classes of Japan use the Chinese classics, much as we do, in 
our collegiate courses, those of Greece and Rome. 

For centuries the Chinese have been traversing the down- 
ward segment of their national cycle. Compared with 
Americans, they seem dull and phlegmatic. Though their 
bodies are healthy, they lack energy, muscular force, and 
mental activity. To see a Chinaman in a hurry would be a 
marvel. They walk their narrow streets moderately, seldom 
getting excited about any thing. Gj^mnasiums, and vigorous 
athletic exercises, are quite unknown among them. They 
have the appearance of being timid; and yet they are per- 
sistent in accomplishing what they undertake. Most of these 
Chinese labor sixteen hours a day. Their industry is pro- 
verbial. 

THE CHINESE COOLIE TRADE. 

Portugal and Spain, Christian (?) nations, commenced the 
coolie traffic some forty years since. Labor in China was 
exceedingly cheap. Europeans were quick to discover this. 
Accordingly, a Spaniard from Peru, while at Macao, 
China, seeking a cargo, conceived the idea of securing under 
some pretense a crew of coolies to work in Peru. This he 
did under the false promise of conveying them to the island 
of Java, to return in a few years well paid for their services. 
But they were landed in Cal]ao, South America, never again 



126 AROUND THE WORLD. 

to see their native land. They complained bitterly of the 
deception; bnt no number of Chinese complaints could 
avail in court against a Spaniard's oath. The reported indus- 
try of these Chinamen reaching the ears of Cuban planters, 
ships were sent out bringing cargoes of them to labor 
on their plantations. But when those who first went out 
with the Spanish captain on the " Don Pedro," and those who 
afterwards sailed for Cuba, and other islands in the west, did 
not return to their homes and families ; and when rumors 
returned that these Chinese labor-emigrants had been 
enslaved, or slain for insubordination, — no more would ship 
for that land afar over the waters. Then commenced that 
wretched system of buying, kidnapping, and chaining, which 
disgraced our common civilization. Ship-owners and traders, 
sailing into Chinese ports, organized bands of thieves to 
steal and kidnap coolies by thousands. And these poor 
Chinamen seized in rice-fields, and boys in schoolrooms, were 
gagged, and dragged by force down into the ill-aired holds 
of vessels, to be borne away, the veriest slaves, to toil in the 
guano-islands, or other portions of the distant West. And 
all this under the flag of European civilization ! Guilty of 
theft, and red-handed, wholesale murder, these Christian 
nations have the cool impudence to send missionaries to 
heathen Chinamen ! 

Kidnapping is still quite a business in the South-Sea Is- 
lands. A little prior to our reaching Australia, the brig 
" Carl," owned by Dr. J. P. Murray, sailed under the British 
flag from Melbourne towards Fiji, for the ostensible purpose 
of pearl -fishing ; but really engaged in man-stealing in the 
southern sea. This was afterwards proved in the court of 
justice that arraigned Mr. Mount. Dr. Murray, now pro 
fessedly pious and prayerful, was guilty of deception, of 
stealing natives, and downright murder. Some of the 
wounded Bougainville natives were thrown overboard alive. 
Is it strange that missionaries find it so difficult to convert 
South-Sea Islanders to Christianity ? 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 127 

AMERICA LONG E3TOWN TO THE CHINESE. 

A scholarly writer in the " North China Herald " assures us 
that a " superstition " in the provinces of Honan and Hupee 
declares that America and China are to be sympathetically, 
if not politically and religiously united. This is based upon 
the testimony of Chinese visionists, who in their ecstatic 
state see " an immense bridge over to the United States." 
These clairvoyant visionists further teach that the " Chinese 
and American nations were once brothers." The manda- 
rins say they have books under the name of Fusang, written 
long ago, that describe America and Occidental scenery with 
a marvelous precision. Chinamen returning from Califor- 
nia tell their relatives that they found races in America — 
the Indians — who could talk some of their own language. 
These notions, with the admiration that China had for Mr. 
Burlingame, give them a strong predilection in favor of 
America, as well as constitute the animus of their emigra- 
tion to our shores. 

The French ethnologist Bailie t, in a letter to the Royal 
Society of Antiquarians, makes certain statements, current 
among the Ting-chause scholars of China, of which the fol- 
lowing is the substance : — 

" There was a great family, called Tooloong, which lived in 
the land of Fukien, and became rich. When a mighty con- 
queror came from the north, and the emperor Hia was not 
able to protect his children, Tooloong and his family joined 
themselves with some barbarians, — Assyrians from the west, 
— and abandoned their homes in grief. They gave them- 
selves into the hands of the gods. The great dragon 
watched them by night, and Su-wang-Shangty by day. For 
more than a thousand days, Tooloong wandered northward 
and eastward until the icicles grew on the skirts of his gar- 
ments ; still the gods said, ' Go on,' and Tooloong's heart 
was stout. Then they found a great bridge as white as the 
summer's cloud, and very strong. The barbarians hesitated, 



128 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

but Tooloong was brave. They all crossed over. On the 
other side was a new China, where no one lived. The trees 
were beautiful, and the beasts kind. Tooloong wondered. 
But they kept on till a land of flowers was seen in the dis- 
tance. The barbarians said, ' Let us not go farther : it will 
burn us.' But Tooloong said, ' I stop not till the dragon- 
god stops.' So they entered the land of flowers. Here they 
were blessed. The gods were very kind. Toolong wanted 
dwellings and a pagoda. He built great cities in the flower 
country, and died. After a long period, some of his children 
tried to come back to China. But the great bridge was 
gone. So they all, with the exception of Nung-yang, were 
sent back to the flower-country by the gods. He, becoming 
immortal by death, flew over on a cloud, and told his kindred 
of the great things Tooloong had done." 

The Americans, whom the Chinese hear of as living in a 
great country to the north and east, are believed, says M. 
Baillet, to be the descendants of Tooloong and the Assyrians 
that accompanied him. 

And Mr. Conwell, a Chinese traveler and author, suggests 
that the " north and east " would very naturally refer to 
the direction of Behring's Straits ; that the " bridge " might 
have been ice, or an isthmus covered with snow, since sub- 
merged; that the " flower-country " might be the land of 
Mexico; that the " pagoda, and blocks of stone dwellings," 
might relate to those wonderful structures, the ruins of 
which, at Palenque and Uxmal, astonish the antiquarian, as 
well as favorably compare with those of Upper Egypt and 
Syria. And what, if possible, is more singular, the images 
of gods manufactured at Bohea, near Ting-Chan, are the 
exact counterparts of the idol-gods found in Southern Cali- 
fornia and Mexico. A striking corroboration of the above 
hypothesis is furnished by Gen. Crook, in his discovery of 
ruins, while operating against the Apaches. And Capt. Man- 
ning, of the regular army, writes from New Mexico under 
date of July 14, 1874, touching the discovery of ancient 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 129 

ruins, and the remnants of a fading race, " This once 
walled, but now city of ruins, was originally discovered by 
a Spanish Jesuit, who published his wanderings in America 
in 1529. His account is quite correct. The demolished 
structures symbolize, in conception, those of the East. The 
language of the remnant of this people, so says an eminent 
archaeologist visiting them last season, resembles the Chinese. 
And so do some of their minor customs ; such as their rever- 
ence for the aged, and devotion to ancestors. The women 
are of the Celestial type, — almond eyes, protuberant bodies, 
and small feet. Thej^ dress much in Chinese fashion. Their 
religious ceremonials are formal, the priests wearing embroi- 
dered robes." Were not the Aztecs the racial link, connect- 
ing this fading race in New Mexico with the migrating 
Chinese and Assyrians of the Tooloong era? 

COOLIES IN CALIFORNIA. — WHY THEY COME. 

The first Chinamen reaching California in 1849 were not 
gold-hunters, but fugitives from Peruvian masters, hiding in 
ships en route from New York to San Francisco, via Callao. 
Others came, ere long, from China in vessels, as Chinese 
cooks and servants. Hearing of the gold-diggings, these, 
with those from Peru, hurried to the mining districts. 
Purses soon filled with the precious metal, they returned to 
their native country, prodigies, painting the Pacific coast a 
very paradise. The news flew. The lower classes, listen- 
ing, became uneasy. While mandarins and Confucian 
scholars live in palatial buildings, rich in furniture, sofas, 
mirrors, and china dishes, the coolies live in houses built of 
bamboo-matting and mortar, with sliding doors for windows, 
and no chimneys, neither pulu upon which they may pillow 
their heads. Often a room in which a family lives is not 
over ten feet square. Their fires are kindled and kept burn- 
ing outside their miserable dwellings. In this one room 
may be found scraps of red paper, as " tablets " to some 
guardian spirit, a kitchen god, a few stools, and burning joss- 



130 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

sticks. Their daily dish is rice, pork, paste rolls, and pulse. 
Rice the great staple, they cook by steaming. 

Most of the coolies come from the Canton district. Ship- 
owners and brokers in Hong Kong send circulars up into the 
provinces, describing our country in glowing terms. And 
further, they urge coolies to arrange their affairs, social and 
financial, preparatory to embarking for America, where they 
may soon acquire fortunes, becoming rich as the mandarins. 

CONSULTING KITCHEN-GODS AND SPIRITS. 

The Chinese have been educated to believe that communi- 
cations can be received from the inhabitants of the heavens 
and the hells, after complying with certain conditions. 
Dreams and visions are carefully noted. Trance is common 
in the higher circles of Chinese society. Considering it 
sacred, and connecting it with their ancestors in heaven, they 
conceal it, so far as is possible, from the searching, critical 
eyes of foreigners. A recent writer* says, " I wonder if the 
Spiritualists of this day in New England ever think that their 
belief is nothing new in theory or practice, or that it has 
been known and believed in China for more than twenty- 
three hundred years. Not only do the Chinese Spiritualists 
believe in the same agencies and same results which distin- 
guish Spiritualists here, but they also practice all the methods 
adopted in this for spiritual manifestions, and a hundred 
others that do not seem to be known here. . . . During the 
stay of spirits in that nether world, the lower spheres, they 
can iap on furniture, pull the garments of the living, make 
noises in the air, play on musical instruments, show their 
footprints in the sand, and, taking possession of human 
beings, talk through them. In a thousand other ways they 
manifest their presence." 

It is very common for coolies to consult trance-mediuma 
of the cash-taking kind, touching the wish and will of their 
ancestors, before deciding to sail for the western world. 

* R. H. Con well's Travels in China, pp. 163, 164. 



THE CHINESE ORIENT. 131 

They also sacrifice to Buddha, and petition the attendance 
<of guardian spirits during their absence from China. 

THEIR HOME IDEALS. 

These are, good health ; happy families, several living con- 
tentedly under the same roof ; gardens and fish-ponds, well 
stocked ; tea fragrant, and grain abundant ; the young Con- 
fucius of the family preparing for competitive examinations ; 
ancestral tablets recording honored names ; gilded halls for 
the wise elders ; violin-shaped instruments with but a single 
string ; plenty of holiday festivals, cheerful with music, 
showy silks, savory dishes, flowers, and hanging creepers ; 
•city walls and store-fronts glittering with quotations from 
favorite authors ; the conscious presence of spirits ; sacred 
books, treating of old sages, reverentially read : all these, 
■with residences near Confucian, Buddhist, and Tauist tem- 
iples, and Chinamen are supremely happy. 

CHINESE CEMETERIES. 

When approaching Whampoa, we had a fair view of a 
'Chinese cemetery, the tombs in which were constructed 
much in the shape of the Greek Omega. They are built 
upon hillsides, and terraced up to the very summit. It is 
believed that tutelary gods protect the graves, and guide the 
spirits of the dead back at certain seasons to their earthly 
homes and ancestral altars. The captain of our steamer, 
pointing to this hill of bones and ashes, said, "I have seen 
on festal days, crowding about those graves, fifty thousand 
people." At the time of burial, they usually make an offer- 
ing to hungry and unhappy spirits, believed to haunt burial- 
places. They clothe their dead bodies in several suits of 
garments for burial. Fashion demands this, which, if 
neglected by the children, is construed as a want of filial 
piety. White is the proper emblem of sorrow and mourning, 
— red of joy and gladness. Widows are required to wear 
unourning three years ; while the widower is expected to 



132 AROUND THE WORLD. 

mourn but one year, wearing a white girdle. The Chinese 
have not the least fear of death, and really mourn deeper 
and wail louder at their weddings than at their funerals. The 
aged procure their coffins before they die, decorating them 
with red silk and other costly material, keeping them in 
their houses as ornamental furniture. One monument in 
this cemetery, towering above the others, was erected to the 
memory of a " literary man" Money, oftener than merit, 
puts up marble shafts in both Europe and America. They 
are useless expenditures in any country. 

PAGODAS. 

Who built them ? and what the original purpose ? There 
are several within the walls of Canton, and we passed a 
number crowning the hill-tops on the way up the Pearl 
River. These graceful towers, three, five, and nine storied,, 
are built of brick or stone. The walls are some ten feet 
thick. . Perfect in proportion, they range from seventy to 
two hundred feet high. Difficult of ascension, terraced with 
vines, and capped with verdure and tropical foliage, they 
constitute an interesting feature in Chinese landscapes. 
The one near Whampoa is only about six hundred years- 
old. Many of them, however, are very ancient, antedating 
the introduction of Buddhism into China from India, 250' 
B.C. They originally symbolized aspiration, pointing toward 
the great Ruler of heaven. At the base, and up their rising 
stairways, the wise sat for meditation and self-examination. 
They were also used as outlooks in time of danger, and 
places of rest for traveling pilgrims. After the visits of 
Buddhist missionaries, they became the repositories of the 
ashes of Buddha and various relics. In some localities they 
are now falling into ruin. Everywhere and in eveiy tiling 
there seems a lack of enterprise. 



CHAPTER XIT. 

CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 

" Chariots are vanity, horses are vanity : the thing remains, the man 
departs : a shadow leaves no trace behind. 

" Station is vanity, office is vanity : when the tide of fortune is spent, 
the retributions of justice begin, and remorse is without bounds. 

" It may be said of every thing in earth which affords happiness, 
after a little time the gratification passes away, and it is, after all, but 
emptiness. 

" The conclusion of all is, that only one thing is real, and that is the 
effect of virtuous deeds leaving their lasting impress on our individual 
being." 

Chinese Essat. 

CONFUCIAN TEMPLES. 

Confucianism is not a religion, but rather a system of 
morals. The best scholars of China to-day are the Confu- 
cians and Tauists. Mandarins never attend services in 
missionary chapels : it is beneath their dignity to listen to 
the theological religions of Christian nations. They have 
no objections to Jesus, the Syrian sage, and would willingly 
give him a niche in the temples of their gods ; but hypocrit- 
ical, money-making, warlike Christians they despise. Visit- 
ing a Confucian temple, I saw a costly image of Confucius. 
There were also tablets of his most distinguished disciples 
and commentators. Students occupied rooms in rear of the 
building. The Chinese no more worship Confucius and 
hero-gods, than do Americans George "Washington and 
Thomas Jefferson, or High-Churchmen the Bible and prayer- 
book. ' 



134 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Walking up the Highway of Science with Dr. J. G. Kerr, 
Secretary of the Medical Hospital in Canton, to the " Ex- 
amination Hall," I was filled with wonder and admiration. 
The hall itself is about fourteen hundred feet in length, by 
six hundred and fifty wide. The principal entrance is at the 
" Gate of Equity ; " and the first inscription over the avenue 
reads, " The opening heavens circulate literature." The 
examination of candidates for the Kii-yan, or second literary 
degree, is here held triennially. Connected with this mam- 
moth hall are nine thousand five hundred and thirty-seven 
stalls, or rooms for. the students on trial ; and in rear of these 
rooms are other apartments for three thousand officials, — 
copyists, servants, policemen. Each candidate for a degree 
is put into a stall, with only pen, ink, and paper, and 
required to write an essay from a given text in the classics. 
One day and one night only are allowed for the production 
of the thesis. There is great competition ; and there are 
thousands of strangers in the city during these examina- 
tions. The third degree is conferred only in Pekin. 

WALLS IN" THE EMPIRE. 

In the declining years of the Mongolians and Chinese, 
man losing faith in man, reigning dynasties conceived the 
notion of constructing gigantic walls. For over three thou- 
sand years, therefore, the Chinese have been a wall-making 
people. Those around the old city of Canton, as they now 
stand, were built in 1380 A.D. The one inclosing the new 
city dates to A.D. 1568. The oldest of the walls surround- 
ing Canton is thirty feet thick at the base, about thirty feet 
high, nearly seven miles in length, and four horses may 
travel upon the top abreast. A recent writer says, " It 
would bankrupt New York or Paris to build the walls of the 
city of Pekin. The great wall of China, the wall of the 
world, is forty feet high. The lower thirty feet are of 
B ranite or hewn limestone ; and two modern carriages may 
pass each other on the summit. It has parapets the whole 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 135 

length, and frequent garrisons along the way, whether .run- 
ning through valleys, or over the crests of mountains. It 
would probably cost more now to build the great wall of 
China, through its extent of a thousand miles, than to build 
the sixty thousand miles of railroads in the United States. 
This wall, so effectual several thousand years since, is now 
an incumbrance." Borne in a sedan-chair, one hardly 
observes, the gate that lets pilgrims inside the Canton walls. 
A sort of a cross-wall surrounds Shameen, the chief resi- 
dence of foreign merchants. Tins wall was finished in 1862. 

SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE CITY. 

Traversing the streets, the olfactories suffering more 
or less from contiguous meat-markets, gaping crowds would 
gather around us, commenting upon our dress, beard, and 
unshaven head, calling us in Chinese " red-haired men from 
the west." It is reported that they shout, "Fan Kwai" — 
foreign devils. Though this were true once, it is not now. 
They treated us with perfect respect. 

Do they eat " rats, cats, and puppies," as the old geog- 
raphy-makers said ? If so, it is an exceptional custom 
practiced by paupers. I saw no cats, but did see a few 
dressed rats and dogs in the Canton markets. Missionaries 
are very apt to see in " heathen lands " what they search for. 
Dr. Kerr informed us that a very small portion of the poorer 
classes probably ate them, superstitiously connecting them 
with certain medical effects, upon the principle that " every 
part strengthens a part." The unjust reports that Chinamen 
ate " cats and puppies," put in circulation by sensationalists, 
were keenly parried by the fact that Europeans ate swine, 
shrimps, snails, frogs, horses, and water-serpents ! 

The Chinese are naturally a rice-eating people ; and in the 
palmy ages of their old seers they subsisted entirely upon 
vegetables, grains, and fruit. Meat-eating, and the shaving 
of their heads, are modern customs ; the one indicating the 
moral degeneracy, and the other subserviency to a foreign 



136 AROUND THE WORLD. 

power. When the Tartars poured down from the north, 
conquering China, the shaving of the head, except the cue, 
was imposed as a token of subserviency to the new dynasty. 
It is now fashionable ; the more foppish adding black silken 
braids to make their long, glossy cues more conspicuous. 
The women dress their heads doubtless, as they imagine, very 
artistically, combing the hair straight back, and then putting 
into it a profusion of tinselings, ornaments, and artificial 
flowers. The Chinese are naturally polite, the mandarins 
haughty. The women paint and powder much as they do in 
America. 

The two sexes occupy different rooms at night, and also 
eat separately: chop-sticks take the place of knives and 
forks. During the first daj^ after reaching Canton, we visited 
Buddhist temples, a Confucian temple, the Examination Hall, 
Chinese printing-offices, china-ware manufactories, embroid- 
ery shops, native schools, the execution grounds, and the 
" Temple of Horrors," where are exhibited the pictorial pre- 
sentations of the ten punishments in hell. This temple is 
much frequented by tricksters and fortune-tellers. The 
schools half deafened us, because the scholars all study aloud 
at the same time ; some literally screaming from behind their 
desks. It was Babel. Education in these primary schools 
consists principally of committing to memory things worth 
knowing in books ; when well committed, the teacher 
explains the meaning, and the application to life. 

In surgery Chinese physicians are far behind European ; 
and for the reason they do not believe in amputations, or the 
use of the knife. They diagnose disease by touching the 
pulse. Some heal by " the laying-on of hands." They per- 
mit their patients the use of little or no water. Much sleep 
is among their recommendations. They use a vast number 
of remedies, some ridiculously superstitious and useless. 
They rely much upon diet, charms, faith, and the driving 
away of evil spirits. Some consider these Chinese physicians 
exceedingly skilful : others do not. They certainly are not 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 137 

scientific in the Western sense of the term. But is medicine 
a science ? Dr. Kerr is doing an excellent work, and China- 
men have in him great faith. Speaking, at the breakfast- 
table, of the general intelligence of the Chinese, Mrs. Kerr 
remarked, " These Chinese are in some respects in advance 
of the Europeans and Americans : all they need is the 
Christian religion." 

It must be remembered that Chinese literature is not only 
extensive, but absolutely massive. The Chinese dictionary 
is a work of one hundred and fifty volumes ; the history of 
China is a work of three hundred and sixty volumes ; while 
there are one hundred and twenty volumes in just the cata- 
logue of the imperial library at Pekin. The learned Lew 
Heang (120 B.C.) wrote several voluminous works entitled, 
" The Biography of FamDus Women." Two thousand, and 
even one thousand years previous to Heang's time, women 
in the Mongolian countries were considered the equals of 
men. The greatest of these nations was governed by a 
queen, with a liberal sprinkling of mothers and sisters for 
officials. No traveler reading ancient literature, and study- 
ing old ruins, can deny the " fall of man." 

When the French and English, under their national ban- 
ners, entered the gates of Pekin in 1860, be it said to the 
lasting shame of that portion of the " allied army," the 
French, that they burned a very valuable library connected 
with the summer-palace of the emperor ; and these French- 
men are called Christians, and the Chinese "heathen." 

Not only is Chinese literature, extensive as it is, free from 
all obscene allusions, but most of it is eminently suggestive 
and moral. 

In one of their odes treating of " discontent," the voyage 
of life is graphically traced from babyish longings to youth, 
then to ambitious schemes, thence to family associations, 
to the possession of horses and vehicles, to thousands of 
fertile acres, to official stations, and finally to positions of 
rank. ■ Still discontented, he aspires to be prime minister, 



138 AROUND THE WORLD. 

then emperor ; and then he calls for exemption from death r 
that he may rule empires and worlds. The following are 
the closing lines of this ethical ode : — 

" His numerous and foolish longings know no stopping-place; 
At last a coffin for ever hides him, 
And he passes away, still hugging his discontent." 

In a Tauist work, treating of " rewards and punishments," 
I find these Emersonian teachings : — 

" When you see the way of truth, enter it. What is not truth, avoid 
it. Watch not in false ways. Do not deceive yourself in committing 
sins in secret. Add to the store of your virtues, and thus increase your 
merits. Let your compassion extend to every object. Be loyal, dutiful, 
and affectionate. Reform yourself that you may reform others. Pity 
the desolate, compassionate the distressed. Honor the aged, be kind 
to the young. Have a care not to harm either plants or reptiles. Sym- 
pathize with the unfortunate, rejoice over the virtuous. Help those who 
are in difficulty, save those who are in distress. Regard the good fortune 
and losses of others as if they were your own. Do not make a display 
either of the faults of others, or of your own excellences. Suppress 
what is evil, give currency to what is good. Receive abuse without 
resentment ; receive favors, as it were, with trembling. Dispense favors 
without asking a return. Give to others without after-regrets. There 
is no peace in wrong-doing. The effect follows the producing cause. If 
a person has been guilty of wicked deeds, and afterwards repents, receive 
him into confidence. Forget the past. To appropriate to one's self ill- 
gotten gains, is like allaying hunger with poisoned food. If desires to 
do right arise in the mind, divinities are present to aid and bless. 

"As regards the virtuous man, all men honor him, Heaven protects 
him, happiness and fortune follow him, evil influences flee far from 
him, divine spirits attend him ; whatever he does will prove successful, 
and he may aspire to being one of the genii of heaven. " 

LATJ-TSZE, THE GREAT MAN" 

Circumstances, rather than merit, often weave the crown 
of fame. Confucius is often termed the sage of China. 
That he was treasury-keeper to the court of Chow, a 
gatherer of ancient wisdom, and a wise man, is admitted : 
but he was not original, as was the old philosopher Lau-tsze, 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 139 

who founded the Tauist sect or school of thinkers. Tauism 
is literally rationalism. Confucius spoke as a schoolmaster, 
quoting the ancients of almost forgotten dynasties as 
authority. 

Lau-tsze, born 604 B.C., was a radical intuitionist. 
His great work is called the Tau-teh-king. " Tau " means 
"truth," or "doctrinal discourse." Most of his works are 
abstruse and metaphysical. He is represented to have 
descended from heaven, being begotten in a miraculous 
manner, as were Pythagoras and Jesus. At birth his hair 
was already white with age ; and accordingly he was named 
what the word " Lau-tsze " implies, — "the immortal boy." 
In a poem aflame with rhapsody, addressed to this personage, 
these lines occur : — 

" Great and most excellent Tau, 
Thou who gavest instruction to Confucius in the east, 
And called into existence Buddha in the west, 
Director of kings, and parent of all sages, 
Originator of all religions, mystery of mysteries! " 

Confucius, once visiting him, did not seem to comprehend 
his transcendental philosophy. Confucius's brain was a 
cistern ; Lau-tsze's a living fountain. Seeing the hollowness 
of education, government, and society, he condemned it ; 
and then, soaring into the regions of thought, he uttered 
truths, and lived them. 

It is a matter of no little surprise to us that friend Steb- 
bins, in his excellent compilation, "The Bible of the Ages," 
made no selections from the venerable philosopher Lau-tsze, 
who, though preceding Confucius by a few years, lived in 
the sixth century before Christ. 

The following are gems gathered at random from the 
volume entitled " Tau-Teh-King : " — 

" The wise produce without holding possession; act without presuming 
on the result ; complete their work without assuming any position foi 
themselves; and, since they assume no position, they never lose any.'' 



140 AROUND THE WORLD. 

" The sage has no special love. He puts himself last, and yet is first; 
he abandons himself, and yet is preserved. Is not this through his 
having no selfishness? When a work of merit is done, and reputation 
is coming, he gets out of the way. To produce, and have not; to act, and 
expect not, — this is sublime virtue." 

" A man on tiptoe can not stand still ; astride his neighbor he caa not 
walk on. He who is self-displaying does not shine ; he who is self -prais- 
ing has no real merit. The unwise are full of ambitious desires, lusting 
for the stalled ox, or for sexual enjoyment. The wise conquer them- 
selves, putting away all impurity, all excess, and all gayety." 

" The sage, timid and reserved, blends in sympathy with all, for he 
thinks of them as his children. There is no greater misery than discon- 
tent; no greater sin than giving rein to lust. Tau, the spirit, is perma- 
nent, yet undefinable. Spirits, but from some source of spirituality, 
would be in danger of annihilation." 

" The sage wears a coarse garment, and hides his jewels in his bosom. 
He grasps nothing, and therefore loses nothing. He does not copy 
others. He recompenses injury with kindness, and excels in forgetting 
himself." 

After a long conference between Lau-tsze and Confucius, 
the latter said to his disciples, " I can tell how the runner 
may be snared, the swimmer may be hooked, and the flyer 
shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon : I can not tell 
how he mounts on the wing through the clouds, and rises 
to heaven. To-day I have seen Lau-tsze, and can only 
compare him to the dragon." 

RECKONING TIME. 

The Chinese profess to trace mystical relations between 
time and certain inherent principles in nature. Their yea/ 
is composed of lunar months, beginning with the new-moon, 
that is, the first new-moon after the sun enters Aquarius, 
which occurs between the 21st of January and the 19th of 
February. This period marks the returning spring ; and the 
first day of the new year is a universal holiday throughout 
China. In reckoning their time, especially if it relates to 
astrology, they use a sexagenary cycle, which confers meaning 
names upon years, months, days, and hours. The Sweden- 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 141 

borgian theory of correspondences takes a wide range with 
Chinese scholars. They insist that the earth in organization 
bears a striking resemblance to man ; having veins, arteries, 
magnetic currents, and a principle of life infilling the whole, 
which principle is denominated fung-shwuy. 

CHINA-WOMEN AND SERVITUDE. 

Women, though occupying a better position than in Mo- 
hammedan lands, are held in a sort of semi-subjection. 
Their often-expressed desire to be born men in the next 
state of existence, reveals their real condition. They paint 
excessively, are exceedingly polite, and desire to become the 
mothers of male children. In some localities women are 
virtually sold. And yet Chinese slavery is much less irk- 
some than was African slavery in our country, inasmuch 
as it is not hereditary. When a coolie sells a daughter, he 
is supposed to convey no right to the services of unborn 
grandchildren. 

Nearly all Europeans and Americans doing business in the 
cities and treaty-ports buy each a China girl as a " mistress," 
for from three to five hundred dollars, keeping the same till 
returning to their native country. This, though considered 
no disgrace by Europeans residing in China, gives the Chi- 
nese a bad opinion of " Christian " morals in the West. 
Leaving for their homes, some of these men make provision 
for their "kept women" and their children; others sell 
them ; and others still turn them off upon the world's cold 
charities. 

Matches being made by the parents, the luxury of court- 
ing or love-making is not among the fine arts of the Flowery 
Land. Betrothals take place at a very early age, and 
frequently the parties do not see each other till the day of 
marriage. Living together, they generally learn to love as 
husband and wife. 

Though polygamy is permitted, the rule is one wife 
Taking other wives, though not highly reputable, is excused 



142 AROUND THE WORLD. 

when the first proves unfruitful. Ancestral worship is fun- 
damental in the Chinese mind. Nothing can exceed their 
desire to have male children to visit their graves, and vener- 
ate their memories. Parents in some of the provinces have 
the power of life and death over their children. Sons obey 
their parents the same after as before their marriage. Chil- 
dren by the second, third, and other wives are legal, and 
have the same rights as those by the first. Sons, marrying, 
bring their wives to the father's house, having different 
rooms, yet forming one household. The first wife, queen of 
the shanty, may not only control, but legally beat the others 
to produce obedience. They are, in fact, her servants ; and 
she claims the ownership and jurisdiction of their children. 

The Rev. Dr. Eitel, of Hong Kong, gave us an interest- 
ing account of a childless couple connected with his church, 
who came to him begging consent for the husband to take a 
second wife, hoping to raise a son. The wife was far the 
most anxious of the two for this consummation. During the 
importuning, she quoted the Bible case of Abraham and 
Sarah. The doctor, after advising them to " submit to the 
will of God," suggested, that if they must have a son, look- 
ing forward to ancestral worship, they adopt some outcast 
child. The Christian woman replied, " This was not Abra- 
ham's course ; and then, such children usually inherit bad 
temperameDts and dispositions." 

BUDDHIST TEMPLES AND BUDDHISM. 

Buddha means the " enlightened ; " as Christos, Christ, 
signifies " anointed." 

Having read for years of Buddhism, and the older religions 
of Asia, my first visit to a Buddhist monastery, to witness 
the temple-services of the priests, was thrillingly interesting. 

Stepping inside, and glancing at the brazen trinity of the 
" three precious ones," the lighted tapers and burning 
incense, the priests with shaven heads, long robes, — gray, 
black, and yellow, according to the order, — bowing their 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 143 

heads to the floor, then rising and re-bowing before their 
images, I mentally said, " Who are the thieves ? " Nothing 
can be more patent than that Roman ritualism is stolen from 
the Buddhists, or that Buddhism is borrowed bodily from 
Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately for churchmen, Saka- 
muni, Gautama Buddha, the original founder of Buddhism, 
died in the year 543 B.C. One of the earlier Catholic mis- 
sionaries, traveling in China, wrote and published that 
" there was no country where the Devil had so successfully 
counterfeited the true worship of the Holy Church as in 
China. . . . These Buddhist priests burn incense, hear 
confessions, and wear long, loose gowns resembling some of 
the fathers. They live in temples like so many monasteries, 
and they chant in the same manner as with us." The vesper 
services in this temple were conducted in the following 
order : the striking of a tom-tom, ringing of bells, intoning, 
chanting, genuflections, and marching up and down the gor- 
geously decorated edifice. The chanting was not only in 
good time, but really melodious. We had a social chat with 
these priests, Dr. Kerr interpreting. The abbot who led the 
service had a solemn visage, and finger-nails nearly an inch 
in length. Taking our departure, these priests joined each 
his oivn hands, and shook them vigorously, instead of shaking 
ours, — the sweaty, clammy, unclean hands of flesh-eating 
Christians (?) 

The appearance of a superior Buddhist temple, exhibiting 
considerable architectural skill, is to an externalist truly 
grand and imposing. Symmetrical and well-proportioned, 
these structures, with their adjoining gardens, are admirably 
calculated to excite wonder and reverence. The tiled roofs 
are decorated with fretted- work, — unique figures of dragons, 
elephants, war-horses, and historical dramas ; while their 
interiors are ornamented with Oriental carving-work, weird 
scrolls, mysterious inscriptions, and gilt sentences written 
over the heads of their divinities. Lotus-flowers adorn 
moet of their altars. This lotus symbol is not understood. 



144: AROUND THE WORLD. 

however, by the more ignorant of Buddhist worship- 
ers. 

Passing the gates of this temple, we saw on our right a 
number of pigs wallowing in the choicest food. An inscrip- 
tion upon the block by the inclosure read, " Save life.'" All 
life, in the eyes of Buddhists, is sacred ; one of their chief 
commandments being, " Thou shalt not take life." And 
yet travelers, — and among them a member of the " Ameri- 
can Expedition to China and Japan," — after describing what 
they term their " sacred pigs," speak of the worship paid to 
this " sanctified pOrk." Saying nothing of the injustice 
done, such a blunder is almost unpardonable. The Rev. Dr. 
Eitel, a German clergyman "of Hong Kong, in publishing a 
correction of this mistake, adds, " There is not a trace of 
porcine-worship to be found among Buddhists." Modern 
Buddhism, bearing but little relation to its ancient grandeur, 
exists to-day in a degenerate and dying state. This mission- 
ary, the Rev. Dr. Eitel, treating of ancient Buddhism in his 
"Three Lectures" delivered and published in Hong Kong, 
says (p. 37) : — 

" Ancient Buddhism knows of no sin-atoning power. It holds out to 
the troubled, 'guilty conscience no chance of obtaining forgiveness. A 
Buddha is not a Saviour. The only thing he can do for others is to show 
them the way of doing good and overcoming evil ; to point out the path 
to Nirvana by his example ; and to encourage others, by means of teach- 
ing and exhortation and warning, to follow his footsteps. Do good, 
and you will be saved : this is the long and short of the Buddhist 
religion." 

CHINAMEN AS EMIGRANTS. 

The written language of this vast empire, understood by 
the learned of Japan, Loo-Choo, Corea, Manchuria, and 
Cochin China, reaches and may influence more of the human 
race than any other in the world. The genius of emigration 
has touched, and become a kind of inspiration with, a portion 
of these Asiatics. Ubiquitous by nature, these Chinese are 
literally the Yankees of the East. For a long period, ingress 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 145 

and egress from the empire were governmental regulations. 
The policy was eventually changed ; and Chinamen are now 
everywhere in the great cities of the world, and the out-of- 
the-way islands of the Pacific, — servants, agriculturists, arti- 
sans, as circumstances demand. 

Every Chinese dealer, buyer and seller, has his own scales. 
They can not trust to others. They live cheap, except on 
feast-days, and keep their valuables in tall stone buildings 
called by Englishmen "pawn-shops." In detecting coun- 
terfeit coin they are experts, depending entirely upon the 
touch and the ring of the metal. While canals are very 
common, they have no railways, no telegraphic lines, and 
no insurance-offices. In money-making they excel, and yet 
they are not considered miserly. 

It matters little what rival Irish laborers in America 
may say or do : Chinamen are certain to flock westward in 
increasing crowds. Competition in many directions, and ulti- 
mately an intermingling of blood, an intermixture of the 
whitish-pink and the olive-brown races, — beneficial perhaps 
to both the Orient and the Occident, — will be the result. 
There are no white men on earth. The three original colors 
were pink, copper, and black, corresponding to the equator, 
the tropics, and temperate zones. Already in Australia and 
the Pacific islands marriages are not uncommon between 
Englishwomen and wealthy Chinamen. This cross of blood 
and temperament produces handsome as well as very intelli- 
gent children. Is it a foreshadowing of their future social 
life in America? 

MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS. 

China is packed with people. Though ambitious crowds 
emigrate, the old hive continues crammed. The Tai-Ping 
war took off infatuated multitudes ; and provincial rebellions 
result not uncommonly in a wholesale slaughter. Still the 
country swarms with over-population. This fact is father 
to much of the infanticide. Is there as rational an excuse 



146 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

for the prevailing foeticide of America? That infanticide 
prevails to an alarming extent in some of the poorer locali- 
ties, is beyond dispute, while in others it is entirely un- 
known. Major Studer, our American consul in Singapore, 
though residing in this city of sixty thousand Chinamen, 
says there has not been a case of infanticide before the 
courts, nor has he as yet even heard of a child's being killed 
by the parents. Chinese women, like other mothers, natu- 
rally love their children ; but the family is large, the means 
of support limited, and the country deluged with popula- 
tion. What must be done ? A check of some kind seems 
indispensable. They do not destroy the first female infant. 
If the second born is a female, there comes a struggle 
between natural affection, and the nuisance of two female chil- 
dren, with no son to bear the name down to posterity, secur- 
ing ancestral worship. If the third is a daughter, it seldom 
escapes strangling by the " woman-nurse " in attendance. 
There is a tacit understanding between the parties to this 
effect. The method of destruction is either by strangula- 
tion or drowning. True, there is a well-defined law against 
this crime ; and the public sentiment of China is decidedly 
opposed to it. And what is equally encouraging Chinese 
scholars write essays and books against the criminal practice. 
A popular tract has this heading : " An Appeal to dissuade 
from drowning Female Children.'''' In it I find these teach- 
ings : — 

" Virtue and vice are connected with their appropriate results as the 
shadow follows the substance. The offending man meets with innumer- 
able troubles and distresses. Suffering follows him. . . . Suppress 
what is evil. . . . Avoid displaying the faults of others, doing things 
in an underhanded manner, and destroying children before or after birth." 

Not mentioning other authorities, the Rev. Di. Eitel, the 
German missionary in Hong Kong, assured us that the mor- 
als of Chinamen would compare very favorably with those 
of Europeans ; that they were far more chaste, and upright 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 147 

•every way, in the country than in the cities ; and that, just 
so far as traders and foreigners generally exercised any influ- 
ence, it was in tendency demoralizing. 

CHINESE BENEVOLENT INSTITTJTIONS. 

Churchmen are inclined to boast of their charitable asy- 
lums and reform-institutions as proofs of the divinity of the 
Christian religion. When premises are assumed, erroneous 
conclusions quite naturally follow. Many hundreds cer- 
tainly, and in all probability thousands, of years before the 
Christian era, China not only had her universities of learn- 
ing, but her public charities and extensive benevolent insti- 
tutions. And though China is, intellectually and nationally, 
in her dotage now, these have not ceased to exist. No^ nr, ly 
every city, but every country village of any importance, has 
its free school and orphan-asylum. Some wealthy citizen 
leading the enterprise, others unite in raising funds, which 
are often increased from the government treasury. 

" In Hang Chow," says the Rev. Mr. Nevius, " I found, in 
connection with a variety of benevolent institutions, an asy- 
lum for old men, which had about five hundred members." 
It was my good fortune to visit one foundling-hospital. 
By diligent inquiry I learned that there were many societies 
for the relief of aged widows, and also for cripples, but 
none for the insane, and for the plausible reason that it 
is among the marvels of the country to see or hear of an 
insane person. 

Charity-schools are very common in China. And then 
there are numerous medical hospitals, where medicines are 
administered to the pcor gratuitously. " There is a society 
in Suchow," writes the missionary Nevius, " for the suppres- 
sion of the publication and sale of immoral books." The 
mandarins contributed largely to this establishment. 

I was repeatedly informed by hunters and travelers that 
in the interior of the country the people were exceedingly 
hospitable, bringing tea and rice to the roadside to refresh 



148 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the wanderer. Turanians and Semitics are proverbially less 
acquisitive than Europeans. Just in proportion, however, 
as they mingle with the Western civilizations, do they become 
scheming and mercenary. Heaven knows, I despise a grasp- 
ing selfishness ! There are individuals of Aryan descent 
mean and selfish enough to suck the moon from the sky, bag 
the golden sun, and, pocketing the stars, wait for a rise in 
fire-mist matter, hoping for a "bargain" at world-building. 
Selfishness breeds devils. 

THE MOSAIC OF GIVE AND TAKE. 

Scholastic Chinamen, given to egotism, think meaner of us 
than we possibly can of them. Their map of the world puts 
China in the center, and America in a small compass adrift on 
the border-lands of the globe. If we laugh at their shaven 
heads, thick-soled shoes, and sack trousers, they sneeringly 
smile at our shaven faces, short-cropped hair, stovepipe hats, 
gloved hands in summer-time, and tight-fitting pants half 
revealing the anatomy of the organism. If we refer to 
the small feet of women among the Chinese nobility, they 
sarcastically point to the wasp-like waists, swinging hoops* 
uncouth chignons, and tawdry manners, of the Americans. 
And then, to walk arm in arm, man and woman, is considered 
by them exceedingly vulgar. Lecture the more intellectual 
upon the subject of morals, and they will push in your faces 
an old copy of " The New-York Herald," with flaring sub- 
headings oi poisonings, forgeries, murders, drunkenness, thiev- 
ing, suicide, divorces, adulteries, foeticide, &c. Chinamen and 
Japanese, attending school or traveling through America, see 
in the city hotels printed cards of warning, " Valuables 
must be handed to the clerk to be locked in the safe." Sallying 
out into the streets, they see club-bearing policemen arrest- 
ing disorderly and drunken men, and occasionally a drunken 
woman. These vices, and others so common in Christendom, 
they report to their countrymen when returning, and then 
make merry over the mock civilization of Christian nations 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 149 

Cool and reflective, these Asiatic Chinese are not slow to 
forget that foreign Christian nations introduced opium into 
their empire, against the positive remonstrances ( f the Pekin 
government. Out of this opium-trade business, grew the 
first war, with a great slaughter of life. They also well 
understand that their countrymen have not been allowed to 
testify in the civil and criminal courts of America only under 
certain crippled conditions ; and, further, they take a sort of 
demoniac satisfaction in reminding Western nations of their 
frequent drunkenness, their houses of prostitution, their city 
dancing-dens, their immodest pictures, and their publication 
of obscene books. On the whole, they think Christian 
nations not only terribly immoral, but downright hypocrites. 
Sir John Davis sensibly wrote thus to Englishmen : " The 
most commendable portion of the Chinese system is the gen- 
eral diffusion of elementary moral education, among even the 
lower classes. It is in the preference of moral to physical 
instruction that we might perhaps wisely take a leaf out of 
the Chinese books, and do something to reform this most 
immoral age of ours." 

THE MANDARINS AND SCHOOLS. 

Those known as mandarins are all scholars, having passed 
the prescribed examinations. The important offices of the 
empire are filled with mandarins only. They may be recog- 
nized by their costly costume, insignia, and train of attend- 
ants. Money does not, as in America, buy " honorable " 
positions. Bating the "blue-button" mandarins, — those 
who, because of some signal service rendered, have received 
a sort of " side honor, " — the others, the genuine, are often 
popular in consideration of their scholarly attainments and 
munificent gifts. 

The court language is mandarin, being spoken by all 
officials ; and although it is important as a written language, 
being spoken all over Northern China, it is nevertheless but 
one of the dialects of the empire. As the Latin may be read 



150 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

and spoken by the very learned of universities in all lands, 
so the written language of China may be understood by the 
literati of North-eastern Asia. 

As a nation, China is eminently literary. The first degree 
conferred upon the scholar is A. B., " beautiful ability ; " 
the second is A. M., literally " the advanced man ; " while 
it is only after the most critical and rigid examination that 
students receive the crowning degree at the capital. Free 
" day-schools " for boys are common. Girls are neglected; 
and jet in some of the provinces there are free schools estab- 
lished for them also, with female teachers. Nearly all of 
even the poorer classes in this vast empire are versed, to 
some degree, in writing, reading, arithmetic, and memorized 
passages from the classics. Japan has a compulsory system 
of education, equally binding upon the children of both 
sexes. Religion in these lands is free. Church and State 
are unmeaning terms. Their great teachers, such as Lau-tsze, 
Confucius, and others, were moralists rather than religion- 
ists. Thousands of the truly learned are pantheists. Many 
of their statements are as transcendental as Emerson's. They 
believe in Tau, — the absolute Unity, manifest as duality in 
the positive and negative forces of the universe. There are 
three great systems of morals and religions in the country. 
Tauism savors of metaphysical pantheism ; Confucianism, of 
practical morals ; and Buddhism, of the old religions of India ; 
and yet these different religionists frequently worship in the 
same temples. And why not ? Is not this a lesson of toler- 
ance to Christendom ? " Heathen " may well say of Chris- 
tians, " Behold how they love one another ! " 

GOD-WORSHIP AND GENERAL WARD. 

Nearly every office and shop in China-lands has its image, 
its sacred altar, and its smoking incense as a " sweet-smelling 
savor." Rightly understood, however, worship in all Mon- 
golian countries implies little more than respect paid to 
uvperiors. Besides ancestors, whose spirit-presences China- 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 151 

men evoke, scholars worship the god of letters, soldiers the 
god of war, business-men the god of wealth, medical men 
some Chinese Esculapius ; and even gamblers have their altars 
and their gods, to whom they appeal, pleading for good luck. 
Lau-tsze and Confucius rank highest among their gods. 
The latter, generally called by them the Ancient Teacher, the 
Perfect Sage, is the most popular. 

All these gods whom they worship were once men, famous 
and renowned as heroes or sages. 

It will be remembered by Americans that John Ward, 
originally a Massachusetts sailor, and afterwards in league 
with Walker in the wild undertaking of conquering Nica- 
ragua for slavery-extension purposes, took an active part in 
the Tai-ping rebellion, righting on the side of the emperor, 
rather than in behalf of a more democratic government. 
The rebellion, calling to its aid many scholars, soon assumed 
gigantic proportions. These Tai-pings in their manifestoes 
indorsed the Christian religion, abolished slavery, encouraged 
education, and cautioned their soldiers against the inhuman 
treatment of prisoners. Victories attended them. 

But the American Ward, introducing into the emperor's 
army European discipline and tactics, proved a martial 
success, and a help to the imperial cause. Still the 
rebellion continued. At first the French and English sym- 
pathized with the Tai-pings. But when the emperor, trem- 
bling for his throne, invited foreign assistance, the French 
and English, in consideration of more open ports, and other 
mammon-like interests in the line of finances, turned at once 
against the " Christianity " and promised constitutional 
government of the Tai-pings, in favor of the imperial reign, 
and co-operated with the Chinese army in the capture of 
cities held by the Tai-pings. Blood flowed in torrents. 

During this Titanic struggle, in which a religio-spiritualism 
formed a powerful element, Ward married a mandarin's 
daughter, became immensely rich, and was promoted to the 
army position of general. But, while reconnoitering a rebel 



152 AROUND THE WORLD. 

fort, a bullet from the enemy proved fatal. He closed his 
mortal career a few days thereafter, at Ningpo, and was 
interred in accordance with the Chinese method of burial. 
His body was afterwards removed to Soong-Kong, and then 
to the inclosure near the Confucian temple, where there is a 
tablet erected to his honor. New deified, he is one of the 
warrior-gods of China. His widow and three children 
reside in a palatial mansion at Shanghai. 

THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT OF THE TAI-PLNG- REBELLION. 

This daring movement originated with Hung-sew-tswen, 
born near Canton, — a clairvoyant seer from infancy. When 
a lad, he was considered strange and eccentric. Returning 
to his home, when a young man, from an unsuccessful exami- 
nation, he was attacked with a severe sickness, during 
which he declared that he had been favored with super- 
natural manifestations and revelations. He felt that he 
had been washed from the impurities of his nature, and 
introduced into the presence of an august being, who 
exhorted him to live a virtuous life, and exterminate demons. 
This immortalized man, whom he often saw, of middle 
age and dignified mien, further instructed him how to act. 
Hung called this visitant his " elder brother." About this 
time he read the New Testament, and declared immediately 
thereafter that this imposing personage seen in his visions 
was Jesus Christ, the Sent-of-God. A scholarly friend of 
his, named Le, uniting with him, they commenced preaching, 
baptizing, and making converts. During their inflammatory 
discourses, persons would fall into the trance, speak in strange 
tongues, and utter alleged revelations and prophecies. They 
organized to protect themselves, and punish their persecutors. 
This led to war ; the insurrection became formidable, and 
for a time successful. Multitudes perished by sword and 
famine ; vacafed fields, and burned cities yet in ruins, remain 
to tell the tale of war. The primal purpose was to overthrow 
the reigning dy nasty, destroy the idols of the land, and 
establish a quasi- Christianity. 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 158 

Hurg-sew-tswen, now putting himself at the head of the 
new kmgdoxii, was styled Tai-ping tien Kwoh, assuming the 
title, " Son of Heaven." He professed to have direct com- 
munications from God, and spoke very familiarly of Jesus 
as his brother. He continually read the Old Testamen, 1 -. 
and observed religious worship in his camp. He assured 
missionaries that his revelations were as authoritative as 
those of the Bible, and he could prove it by his divine gifts. 
He further declared that spirits aided him in his victories. 
Loyal Chinamen called him and his soldiers, " long-haired 
rebels." Successes corrupting his leading officers, with 
envies and jealousies in different camps, the emperor's armies 
aided by Gen. Ward and the English and French in com- 
bination, the Tai-ping rebellion was put down. The struggle 
continued fourteen years. The leading spirit of the rebel- 
lious host committed suicide. Those caught by the govern- 
ment officials were tortured and massacred. Hung-sew-tswen's 
teachings continued to produce their legitimate results. His 
admirers believed him to have been God-inspired for a pur- 
pose, as was Moses of Hebrew memory. 

TEA. 

Of tea-cultivation and the tea-districts I have little to say, 
and because everybody does who is privileged to put a foot 
down in China. Suffice it that the Chinese themselves, 
though great tea-drinkers, do not drink " green tea" 
Further, in preparing tea, they steam it a long time, in 
preference to boiling. There is a delicious, invigorating 
freshness to the black tea, when thus prepared by the 
people who cultivate the shrub. They use their best teas 
themselves. 

Stepping into their silk-shops, or bazaars of any kind, the} 7 
present you a cup of tea instead of a glass of intoxicating 
liquor. Why should Americans drink tea ? Why should 
so much pure crystal water be spoiled by putting into it 
tea, coffee, and other Eastern drugs? Why import either 
Asiatic herbs or religions ? 



154 AROUND THE WORLD. 

The spirit of progress, which flashes up in the political 
heavens of the West, has touched with intellectual intensity 
our antipodal kinsmen of the East. Commerce, whitening 
all seas, is a great civilizer. " Transition " is the great word 
now in China and Japan. Europeans and Americans are 
not only flocking into the original " five treaty-ports " of 
China, but are exploring the interior and the highlands 
of the Mongolian regions. The central government, in 
admitting foreign ministers to Pekin, in sending an embassy 
to Western nations, in establishing a university and schools 
with European teachers, and treating other nations with the 
respect becoming the fraternity of humanity, is taking a 
step in the right direction. Bating a national egotism, and 
a certain innate reserve, I place a much higher estimate 
upon the China races, intellectual and moral, since seeing 
the better classes in their native country. 

Mandarins and officials, so far as I heard, spoke in great 
commendation of the Hon. Mr. Burlingame, our former 
minister to the capital. It may not be generally known, 
even in America, that he was a Spiritualist. This writer in 
the Atlantic Monthly, however, must have known it : — 

" As an example of the influence of a single man, attained over an 
alien race, whose civilization is widely different, whose religious belief 
is totally opposite, whose language he could not read nor write nor 
speak, Mr. Burlingame's career in China will always be regarded as an 
extraordinary event, not to be accounted for except by conceding 
to him a peculiar power of influencing those with whom he came in 
contact ; a power growing out of a mysterious gift, partly intellectual, 
partly spiritual, largely physical ; a power whose laws are unknown, 
whose origin can not be traced, and whose limits can not be assigned ; a 
power which we designate as magnetism." 

When the Chinese government received official notice of 
Minister Burlingame's death, they gave him a tablet in a 
Pekin temple, thus preparing the way to deification. 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 155 

CHINESE SPIRITUALISM. 

Conversing with consuls, missionaries, the older European 
residents, and the Chinese themselves, concerning their be- 
lief about gods and demons, genii and spirits, with the rela- 
tions they sustain to mortals, the inquiry arises, " Where 
shall I commence ? what say first ? " The Rev. Dr. Mac- 
Gowan, returning to America, said when lecturing in 
Chicago, " China is a nation of Spiritists." Dr. Damon re- 
iterated the same thing to me in Honolulu. Mr. Bailey, our 
Hong-Kong consul, assured me that the lower classes were 
very superstitious ; that the Fung-shwuy was a mystery ; and 
that they all believed in the presence of their ancestors, and 
their power to hold converse with them." A delineation of 
the Fung-shwuy in its relations to the selection of burial- 
places, to the ethereal principles of the universe, to 
atmospheres, emanations, and vitalizing forces under the 
influence of gods and spirits, would require a chapter rather 
than a passing paragraph. When foreigners look at the 
sky, or at a beautiful landscape in the distance, Chinese 
bystanders are sure to remark, " They are looking at the 
Fung-shwuy.'''' 

These Orientals have their trance mediums, mostly 
females j their writing mediums, using a pointed, pen-like 
stick, and a table sprinkled with white sand ; their person- 
ating mediums, giving excellent tests; their seers, wno 
professedly reveal the future ; and their clairvoyants, who, 
to express their meaning in English, " see in the dark." It 
may be affirmed without dispute, that Spiritism in some 
form is an almost universal belief throughout the Chinese 
Empire. It seems natural to the Turanian and Semitic 
races. In making this broad affirmation, I use the term 
" Spiritism " in preference to " Spiritualism," because the lat- 
ter implies not only phenomena, but philosophy, religion, and 
the practice of true living. 



156 AROUND THE WORLD. 

WHAT MISSIONARIES SAY OP THEIR SPIRIT-INTERCOURSE, 

Hear their testimonies : — 

" There is no driving out of these Chinese," says Father 
Gonzalo, " the cursed belief that the spirits of their an- 
cestors are about them, availing themselves of every oppor- 
tunity to give advice and counsel." 

" They burn incense, beat a drum to call the attention of 
the desired spirit," writes Padra De Mae, " and then, by 
idolatrous methods, one of which is a spasmodic ecstasy, 
they get responses from the dead. . . . They have great 
fear of the evil spirits that inhabit forests." 

In two volumes entitled "Social Life Among the Chinese," 
by the Rev. J. Doolittle, the author informs us that " they 
have invented several ways by which they find out the 
pleasure of gods and spirits. One of the most common of 
their utensils is the Ka-pue, a piece of bamboo-root, bean- 
shaped, and divided in the center, to indicate the positive 
and the negative. The incense lighted, the Ka-pue properly 
manipulated before the symbol-god, the pieces are tossed 
from the medium's hand, indicating the will of the spirit by 
the way they fall." . . . The following manifestation is 
more mental : " The professional takes in the hand a stick 
of lighted incense to expel all defiling influences ; prayers 
of some kind are repeated, the fingers are interlaced, and 
the medium's eyes are shut, giving unmistakable evidence 
of being possessed by some supernatural and spiritual 
power. The body sways back and forward; the incense 
falls, and the person begins to step about, assuming the 
walk and peculiar attitude of the spirit. This is consid- 
ered infallible proof that the divinity has entered the body 
of the medium. Sometimes the god, using the mouth of 
the medium, gives the supplicant a sound scolding for 
invoking his aid to obtain unlawful or unworthy ends." . . . 
Another " method of obtaining communications, is for the 
applicant to make his wishes known to a person belonging 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 157 

to a society or company established for facilitating such con- 
sultations. Upon these occasions, the means employed 
consist in the use of a willow or bamboo pen, placed upon 
the top of the hand over a table of white sand ; the arm 
becomes tremulous, and the writing is produced. And still 
another course is " for the female medium to sit by a table on 
which are two lighted candles, and three sticks of burning 
incense. After inquiring the names of the deceased, and 
the time of their death, she bows her head upon the table 
with the face concealed. Soon lifting it, the eyes closed, 
the countenance changed, the silence profound, she is sup- 
posed to be possessed by the spirit of the dead individual, 
and begins to address the applicant ; in other words, the dead 
has come into her body, using her organs of speech to com- 
municate with the living. . . . Sometimes these mediums 
profess to be possessed by some specified god of great heal- 
ing powers, and in this condition they prescribe for the sick. 
It is believed that the god or spirit invoked actually casts 
himself into the medium, and dictates the medicine." 

Rev. Mr. Nevius in his work, " China and the Chinese," 
declares that " volumes might be written upon the gods, 
genii, and familiar spirits supposed to be continually in com- 
munication with the people. The Chinese have a large 
number of books upon this subject, among the most noted 
of which is the Liaa-chai-ehe-i, a large work of sixteen vol- 
umes. . . . Tu Sien signifies a spirit in the body. And 
there are a class of familiar spirits supposed to dwell in the 
bodies of certain Chinese who became the mediums of com- ' 
munication with the unseen world. Individuals said to be 
possessed by these spirits are visited by multitudes, particu- 
larly those who have recently lost relatives by death, and 
wish to converse with them. . . . Remarkable disclosures 
and revelations are believed to be made by the involuntary 
movements of a bamboo pencil, and through those that 
claim to see in the dark. Persons considering themselves 
endowed with superior intelligence are firm believers in 
those and other modes of consulting spirits." 



158 AROUND THE WORLD. 

It was my privilege to see these coolie Chinamen convers- 
ing with their spirit-ancestors in several temples. Theii 
methods are numerous ; and the prevalence of this belief 
among them astonished me. It is almost universal ; and 
yet with the lower classes it has degenerated into absurd 
superstitiom. 

SPIRITISM VERY OLD IN CHINA. 

" The practice of divination," writes Sir John Barrows, 
" with many strange methods of summoning the dead to 
instruct the living, and reveal the future, is of very ancient 
origin, as is proven by Chinese manuscripts antedating 
the revelations of Scripture." The " eight diagrams, 
with directions for devination, were invented," says the 
Rev. Mr. Nevius, " by the Emperor Fuhi, probably nearly 
3000 B.C. About 1100 B.C., Wen- Wang, the Literary 
Prince, &nd his son Chow-Kung, further developed the 
system with explanations." The Yih-King is a sort of an 
encyclopedia of spiritual marvels and manifestations. It was 
denominated in the time of Confucius, the " Book of 
Changes." 

Gliddon writes, " The emperor of China, Yao, who reigned 
about 2337 years B.C., in order to suppress false prophecies, 
miracles, magic, and revelation, commanded his two ministers 
of astronomy and religion to cut asunder all communications 
between sky and earth, so that, as the chronicle expresses it, 
-there should be no more of what is called ' this lifting up 
and coming down.' " 

This missionary, Mr. Nevius, further assures us that in the 
" latter part of the Chan dynasty, which continued to 249 
B.C., Kivei-Kuh-Sien-sz applied the Yih-King to the use of 
soothsaying, and is regarded as among the fathers of augurs. 
During the past and the preceding dynasty, many books have 
been written upon this subject, among the most noted of 
which is the Poh-shi-ching-tsung, a work of six volumes on 



CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 159 

the " Source of True Divination." Here are a few passages 
from the preface : — 

' ' The secret of augury consists in communication with the gods. The 
interpretations of the transformations are deep and mysterious. The 
theory of the science is most intricate, the practice of it most important. 
The sacred classic says, ' That which is true gives indications of the future.' 
To laiow the condition of the dead, and hold with them intelligent inter- 
course as did the ancients, produces a most salutary influence upon the 
parties. . . . But when from intoxication or feasting or licentious pleas- 
ures they proceed to invoke the gods, what infatuation to suppose that 
their prayers will move them! Often when no response is given, or the 
interpretation is not verified, they lay the blame at the door of the augur, 
forgetting that their failure is due to their want of sincerity. ... It is 
the great fault of augurs, too, that, from a desire of gain, they use the art 
of divination as a trap to insnare the people," &c. 

Naturally undemonstrative and secretive, the higher classes 
of Chinamen seek to conceal their full knowledge of spirit 
intercourse from foreigners, and from the inferior castes of 
their own countrymen, thinking them not sufficiently intelli- 
gent to rightly use it. The lower orders, superstitious and 
money-grasping, often prostitute their mediumistic gifts to 
gain and fortune-telling. These clairvoyant fortune-tellers, 
surpassing wandering gypsies in " hitting " the past, infest 
the temples, streets, and roadsides, promising to find lost 
property, discover precious metals, and reveal the hidden 
future. What good thing is not abused ? Liberty lives, 
though license prowls abroad in night-time. Christianity 
wore the laurels it wove, though Peter denied and Judas 
betrayed. Spirit-communion is a reality, and, wisely used, a 
mighty redemptive power, as well as a positive demonstra- 
tion of a future existence. 

Though wars are to be deprecated, and the war-spirit made 
subject to arbitration, it must nevertheless be admitted that 
the recent war between China and Japan had a very salutary 
effect upon the Chinese. It cooled their self-esteem and 
humbled their pride. They already begin to have a higher 
appreciation of Western civilization. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 

Aboard " The Irrawaddy," a magnificent French steamer 
the sea calm and smooth as polished glass, richly did I enjoy 
sailing down the coast of Cochin China to Anam. 

THE ANAMITES. 

Though the French are wretched colonists, they have made 
a success at Saigon, Anam, the southern part of Cochin 
China. The city, numbering several thousand inhabitants, 
has a naval station, situated up the lazy, serpentine Saigon 
River, some fifty miles from the beautiful bay. 

Three miles from this French town, where we land facing 
bristling soldiery, is the old China city itself, claiming from 
seventy to a hundred thousand. During the latter part of 
the Bourbon reign, the Jesuit missionaries from France had 
difficulty with the Anamites in this portion of Cochin China, 
whose king resides up the River Hue, in an old walled city. 
France, in accordance with her usual policy, sided with the 
priests, sending a fleet to adjust a settlement, and enforce 
claims. The king was frightened. Demands were made, 
and a fine slice of territory was ceded to the French. This 
occurred during the reign of Louis XVI., noblest of all the 
Bourbon rulers. 

The Anamites — evidently a mixture, afar in the past, of 
Malays and Chinese — are small in stature, and slovenly in 
iippearance ; chewing the betel-nut, which colors their lips, 



COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPOEE. 161 

teeth, and tongue a dark, inky brown. Women are more 
excessive chewers than the men. Though a subject of discus- 
sion by our party, it was decided by a slight majority that 
their sooty, shriveled mouths excelled American tobacco- 
chewers in nastiness ! 

These women wear rings on their toes, ankles, wrists, and 
generally one in the nose. They sling the nude young child 
astride the hip, throwing the right arm around it as a pro- 
tection. Their complexion is a dark olive or copper. Those 
residing back on the highlands, and in the interior, away 
from French civilization, are not only physically larger, but 
superior mentally and morally. History writes these people 
down as the original Chinese, — bold, brave, and uncon- 
quered by the Tartars. They do not shave their heads, nor 
wear clothing save around their loins. 

The principal language spoken is French. The religion 
of the natives is Buddhism. The Bonzes are very cour- 
teous, allowing foreigners to inspect every thing in their 
temples. We are only a few degrees north of the equator. 
Intensely hot, it is the paradise of gnats and mosquitoes. 
Fahrenheit, 88°. 

The country along the Saigon River is low, flat, and densely 
wooded, but excellent for rice-culture, the gum of lacquer, 
cinnamon, and many of the precious woods. The highlands 
afar back from the valley abound in fertile fields. Tropical 
fruits burden the markets. The city and valley-lands are 
unhealthy. This is acknowledged by the French. On 
account of the heat, business is suspended in the French part 
of the city from ten o'clock, a.m., till five o'clock, p.m. 

FRENCH FASHION AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

The French are reported polite and fashionable. But 
what is fashion ? How far is it authoritative ? and who are 
subjects of the fickle goddess ? Sitting at the table aboard 
our steamer, the doctor was reminded, and I was twice asked, 
by the garpon, to appear in certain suits at certain times of 



162 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

the day, — say the dinner-hour. It was a piece of imperti- 
nence ; and I sent the following note to the navy oScer in 
command of the steamer : — 

Commander op "Irrawaddy." Sir, — It is, in my estimation, nobler 
to be a man, maintaining true moral independence, than to be a French- 
man or an American. And as the two legitimate purposes of clothing 
are to cover the body, and conduce to its comfort, will you have the 
kindness to instruct your servants to give neither myself nor Dr. Dunn 
further annoyance by suggesting what hour we dress for the day, or in 
what style of dress we appear at the dining-table ? Fashion, a heartless 
tyrant, has no international standard ; and, if it had, I should be guided 
entirely by my own judgment and good sense of propriety. 

Respectfully thine, 

J. M. Peebles. 

The reply, prompt and gentlemanly, saved us from future 
annoyances. 

Society is like a light honeycomb, pretty but empty, 
while fashion is the ruling queen of the nations. Rich and 
poor, the stupid and the intelligent alike, fawn around, and 
bow down to this stupid goddess. And if any individual, 
man or woman, conscious of that moral independence inhe- 
rent in the God-given nature, refuses allegiance to, or rises 
to overthrow the mandates of fashion, a pig-headed public 
raises the cry at once, " He's eccentric ! " " He does it to 
attract attention ! " And the poor soul, finding no moral 
support, is often whipped back into the popular rut, to 
sheepishly trot along with the dawdling multitude. Down 
in my soul's depths I detest, despise, loathe, and hate this 
clinging worship paid at the shrine of fashion ; and be it 
known to France in particular, that I will shave or not, wear 
my hair long or short, and dress precisely as I please, 
regardless of fashionable dandies or dictatorial aristocrats. 

SINGAPORE. 

Sing of Cuba, queen of the Antilles, if you choose ; but 
I'll sing of Singapore and its spice-fields, Singapore and its 



COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 163 

waters of crystal and sapphire. The word, literally Singa- 
pura, from the Sanscrit singa, touching, and pura, city, 
implies the ancient "touching-city" for commercial traders 
between China and the countries west. 

Nestling down to within some seventy miles of the equa- 
tor, one would naturally suppose, though imbosomed in 
flowers and fadeless foliage, that Americans from the North- 
ern States could not here live ; and yet they do. The green 
isles, the sea-breezes, the atmospheric moisture from fre- 
quent showers, and the financial facilities for traffic, reveal 
the reasons. There are really no seasons here, — not even 
the wet and dry of California and Asia Minor ; but a per- 
petual summer, with a remarkable equableness of tempera- 
ture, crowns the year. All this said, nevertheless the 
climate must be enervating. 

Just before reaching this unique city of 150,000, made up 
of Chinamen, indigenous Malays, Klings from Madras, Bur- 
mese, Siamese, Parsees, and Arabs, we crossed the 180th 
meridian west from New York, being almost directly oppo- 
site our home in New Jersey; and yet, though feet to feet 
with Americans, we did not fall off into space, nor did the 
law of gravitation cease to fasten us to Mother Earth. 
Making into the harbor, the steamer passed between a large 
island covered with palms, and a cluster of little islets put- 
ting up from coral depths. At the feet of these were glit- 
tering white sands, while their summits were crowned with 
rich green jungles. Others had been cleared, their sides 
serried something like potato-fields, and planted with pine- 
apples. 

The isle of Singapore is owned by the English. While 
there are about five hundred Europeans in the city, mostly 
English, it seems a general landing-place for the waifs of the 
world. Races are terribly mixed. This is a famous mart 
for articles in the line of jewelry. Their coral, sea-shells, 
precious stones, tiger's claws, birds-of-paradise, Chinese 
porcelain, and carvings in sandal-wood, are exceedingly beau 



164 AROUND THE WORLD. 

fciful. Many Oriental imitations are sold by these natives foi 
the genuine. A daily-expected steamer, bound for India in 
the opium-trade, detained us over two weeks. It is at 
present (June 22) the season of the monsoons in this lati- 
tude. Junks are turning Chinaward. 

NATURAL BEAUTY OF THE MALAY LANDS. 

In these Eastern archipelagoes and oceans,, Nature puts 
human language to shame when it attempts a description of 
her luxuriance. These islands of loveliness, comparable to 
emeralds set in seas of silver, or gems glittering upon the 
bosom of hushed waters, their foliage reaching to the shim- 
mering edge, where they dip their broad leaves in heaving 
waves; these Indies, the lotus-lands of the East, consid- 
ering the geological formations, the Oriental vegetation, the 
magnificent forests musical with birds of gaudiest plumage r 
the cocoanut-palm (prince of palms for beauty and nobility), 
the groves of spices, where one eternal summer gilds hill 
and dale, — all these conspire to constitute the loveliest 
region on earth. It is not strange that certain theologians, 
ethnologically inclined, have fixed the Adamic paradise in 
the Malay Archipelago. Other islands have their charms, 
but these bear away the palm. Perfumed isles and aromatic 
airs are no fabled dreams. Stepping out under brilliant 
skies in evening-time, when the land-breezes were coming 
in, I have been literally fanned by soft winds laden with 
most delicious perfumes. 

The Malays proper inhabit the Malay Peninsula and 
nearly all the coast-regions of Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes, and 
many of the smaller islands. 

In this equatorial .latitude, and the islands adjoining it, 
Alfred R. Russell, the distinguished naturalist and Spiritual- 
ist, spent eight years collecting an immense cabinet of plants, 
insects, birds, and animals. 

Though the Malay Peninsula abounds in bananas, mangoes, 
inangosteens, gambier, nutmeg, pepper, bamboo-groves,. 



COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 16.5 

gutta-percha forests, pine-apple plantations, tapioca uplands, 
clove and cinnamon gardens, it has its drawbacks in the 
way of insects, lizards, serpents, and tigers. Mosquitoes 
sing the same bloodthirsty tunes as in America. Though 
tarrying at the best hotel, our rooms are infested with flies, 
beetles, fleas, and slimy lizards, crawling upon the walls and 
ceiling. The other morning, upon rising, and lifting my 
pillow, out darted from under it a wretchedly ugly lizard ! 
All poesy lands have their prose sides. 

THE MALAYS AN OLD RACE. 

Though the Malay Peninsula was unknown to Europeans 
till the arrival of the Portuguese in India about the year 
1500, the race for weary ages possessed the knowledge of 
letters, worked metals, domesticated and utilized animals, 
cultivated fields, and led the commerce of the Pacific Ocean. 
Their language crops out not only in very remote islands to 
the east, but according to the English ethnologist, Mr. 
Brace, " in Madagascar, three thousand miles distant, the 
Malay words form one-seventh of the vocabulary of the 
islanders." 

Br. Prichard regarded it as settled that there was a 
Malay-Polynesian race, which, at a period before the influx 
of Hindooism, existed nearly in the state of the present New 
Zealanders. 

3farsden declares that the main portion of the old 
" Malay is original, and not traceable to any foreign source." 
Humboldt considered the Malay-Polynesian languages to 
have been "primitively monosyllabic, with marked resem- 
blances to the Chinese." 

Crawford, who has made the Malays a study, says, after 
speaking of the "immemorial antiquity of their language,"" 
that the art of converting iron into steel has been immemo- 
rially known to the more civilized nations of the Malay Archi- 
pelago. There are Sanscrit inscriptions in Java, and some 
of the -other Malay-peopled islands. The Malay annals, a 



166 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

'blending of fact and fable, date back nominally to the reign 
of Alexander the Great. Among relics found, while exca- 
vating in some of these islands, are very ancient Chinese 
coins. 

MALAY FEATURES, DRESS, AND DISPOSITION. 

Standing upon the steamer before landing in Singapore, 
you see a motley crowd dressed in every possible costume, 
from the simple white hip-rag of the nearly naked Kling, 
the silken attire of the well-to-do Malay, and the everlasting 
blue of Chinamen, to the flowing dress of the Mohammedan 
Hadjee. Wealthy Chinamen dress, however, in fine style, 
having on these islands their carriages, and scores of servants. 

The Chinese coolies carry every thing, from pails of water 
to cook-shops, on balancing shoulder-sticks ; while the 
Klings, from Madras and the Coromandel coast, and the 
Malays also, carry their cakes, fruits, and wares in trays upon 
their heads. 

The Chinese in these islands are not permitted to be 
policemen because of their belonging to secret societies 
among themselves. These coolies are frequently brought 
into the criminal courts ; but a Malay seldom appears as a 
culprit. The Malayan costume consists of a baju, or jacket, 
a pair of short trousers, with a sarong, i.e., a piece of silk, 
wide at the top as at the bottom, gathered close around the 
waist. In addition to the sarong, the women wear a loose, 
sash-like garment thrown over the shoulders, called a kabia, 
which, to say the least, is cool and comfortable. 

In complexion they are fairer than the men, — a handsome 
light olive. In married life they are noted for chastity, and 
the love of family. Owing to the comeliness of their fea- 
tures, their delicate hands, drooping lashes, fair faces, lus- 
trous eyes, and ruby lips, many Europeans are charmed with 
them ; and who, if they do not, ought, by every principle of 
justice, to marry them. 

Though a degenerate race at present, they are naturally 



COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 167 

proud, frank, generous, true to their friends, and affectionate 
in disposition. In physique they are well-proportioned. 
They step with an independent gait. They are not industri- 
ous. They have no acquisitiveness. In an ungenial clime, 
among selfish worldlings, they would starve. They exem- 
plify the command, " Take no thought for the morrow." 
Some of them are endowed with rather a high order of 
intellect. Their foreheads, though full, are larger in the per- 
ceptive than the reflective range. 

The Malay nobility, usually exceedingly wealthy, are 
called Rajahs. These, with the Maha Rajahs, a rank 
higher, are now educating their children in Europe. The 
Rajah of Johore has eighty thousand subjects. His posi- 
tion is nearly equal to that of a petty king in Continental 
Europe. 

WHENCE THE MALAY RACE? 

America, young and ambitious, is not all of the world. 
Who were the mound-builders of the West ? From whence 
the aboriginal red Indians ? Before the American Continent 
had been pressed by human feet, Asian civilizations had 
flourished and died. Saying nothing of theories pre-historic, 
there are solid reasons for believing that the Malays were 
originally a composite of Central Africans and Mongolians. 
In fact, both tradition and inscription unite in teaching, that, 
long ere the Pyramids reared their mighty forms, the Malays 
were conquered by powerful kings from the north. Twice 
brought under the yoke of foreign rulers from the north and 
north-east, they inherited from that nationality now known 
as the Chinese. Each invasion necessarily left the racial 
effect upon the posterity. 

Do not shrug the shoulders at the mention of Africa. 
Neither Congo nor Congo negroes constitute all of Africa. 
And, further, all Ethiopians did not originally have thick 
lips, a flat nose, and short, knotty hair. Cushite history 
proves this. The color, however, was always dark, or jet 



168 AROUND THE WORLD. 

black. There is a lingering Aryan element in Central Africa. 
The New Guineans, set down by all ethnological writers as 
Malayans, have curly, crispy hair ; it is also long and bushy, 
and of it they are very proud. Whenever the negro ele- 
ment comes in collision with the Mongolian or Malay race, 
in its advanced stages, as in Asia, and more recently some 
of the Philippine Islands, it melts away much as do wild 
animals before civilization. 

HOW CAME THE MALAYS INTO NATIONAL POSITION? 

Subjective thinkers, as well as geologists, care little for 
Jewish records, Usher's, or any other theologian's calcula- 
tions. Ruins, monuments, inscriptions, and lingual roots, — 
these determine eras of civilization and the colonization of 
races. 

Eastern traditions state that many, very many thousands 
of years since, when a traveler entered a distant country, 
having a different colored skin, he was supposed by the more 
superstitious to have been dropped from a star, to people a 
new portion of the earth; and accordingly the tribe that 
he visited gave him several wives, and sent him adrift to 
replenish and populate. But to approach the historical, with 
inferences from monumental ruins, inscriptions, and sugges- 
tions from attending unseen intelligences, some eight thou- 
sand years since the Malay Peninsula, and a vast tract of 
country north of it, was the great half-way halting-ground 
between the Central Africans of the west, and the Chinese 
or more northern Mongolians of the east. On these rich 
table-lands, abounding in wild grasses, grains, and fruits, 
intercrossing caravans with their merchandise rested and 
recruited. Settlements commenced, intermarriages followed, 
villages, then cities ; and finally an opulent kingdom was the 
result. Becoming proud and depredatory, this kingdom 
warred with, and was conquered by, Tartar hordes and Mon- 
golians ; getting, among other consequences, a fervid infusion 
of Northern blood through the lax social relations then pre- 
vailing, 



COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 169 

After the lapse of a few hundred years, they were again 
conquered by the Chinese and their allies, the conquerors in 
considerable numbers remaining in the country, softening 
the skin to a light copper, and straightening the hair, through 
intermixture in their social relationships. These causes, 
with various climatic conditions, constituted the Malay race, 
which about six thousand years ago were in their palmy 
periods. Their language, ever flexible, shows plainly that it 
has been acted upon both by the monosyllabic Chinese and 
the Sanscrit. The very word " Malay " is Sanscrit. 

Inheriting Mongolian energy, and naturally sailors, these 
Malayans began at a very early period to emigrate, and colo- 
nize islands to the south and east. The north-east monsoons 
would take them first to Sumatra ; and then, considering 
the oceanic currents and prevailing winds, they would grad- 
ually drift southward and to the east. Evidently the mound- 
builders, and the descendants of these, the North-American 
Indians, were largely Malayan in origin. This long-unsolvec 
problem admits of ethnic demonstration. 

THE MALAYANS AMERICA- WARD. 

While cruising across the Pacific, Capt. Blythen pointed 
out to us, on his North and South Pacific charts, sixty islands 
reported and located by navigators some two hundred 
years since, that have sunk from hflman sight. Some of 
these were said to have been inhabited. Cataclysms and 
convulsions were ever common along the volcanic zones of 
the tropics. A vast continent, something like the New At- 
lantis spoken of by Plato, was submerged in the Pacific, save 
the mountainous peaks, several thousands of years ago. 
Such of the aborigines as survived, upon the mountain-sum- 
mits and high lands, intermingled maritally with roving, 
eastward-bound Malays. They crossed from island to island 
in crafts corresponding somewhat to their present prahus. 
Traversing the island-dotted waters through Polynesia, they 
reached the western coast of South America. Their conti- 



170 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

nental course during the succeeding centuries was north- 
ward, through Mexico, to the great chain of northern lakes. 
Ruins, symbols, and the crumbling pottery of the last of the 
mound-builders and Mexicans, are almost identical with 
ruins, carvings, and old roads in Malay-peopled lands. 

The acute ethnological writer, D'Eichtal, declares that 
" the Polynesian is an original civilization, and apparently 
the earliest in the world ; that it spread to the east and the 
west from its focus in Polynesia, or in a continent situated in 
the same region, but now submerged ; that it reached America 
on the one side, and Africa on the other, where it embraced 
the Fulahs and Copts." He further suggests " that a germ 
from the Polynesian cradle, falling into the valley of the 
Nile, originated the ancient Egyptian civilization." 

CUSTOMS COMMON TO MALAYS AND INDIANS. 

The Rev. Mr. Keasbury, thirty years in the East, and one 
of the best Malay scholars in the world, has, in keeping with 
another" gentleman, a list of words found both in the Malay 
and the original dialects of the American continent. But 
we have no space to adduce the argument from the similar- 
ity of language. Since starting upon this tour, I have seen 
no Pacific Islanders, no people anywhere, that in general 
features, color of skin and hair, carriage in walking, method 
in sitting, and government by chiefs and sub-chiefs, so 
closely resembled our better Indian tribes of the West and 
South-west. 

Traveling out into the country from Johore, and also up 
the Peninsula (starting in at the Wellsley Province, oppo- 
site Penang), where monkeys and the ruder of the Malays 
inhabit alike fields and forests, I either observed, or learned 
from others, that these degenerate Malays, instead of shaving 
the beard, pluck it out, as do the Indians of America. 

Walking in streets and forest-paths, the woman strides 
along in advance, the man following to ward off beasts of 
prey. So with the Indians. In this country, by the way, 



COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 171 

tigers, stealing up behind, pounce upon the victim, the fore- 
paw striking the back of the neck. Deaths by tigers are 
frequent. 

The Malays generally bury their dead in a sitting position, 
interring with them implements of war, and food, as do some 
of our Indian tribes. 

The Malay women, back in the mountainous districts, per- 
form all the hard labor, while the men hunt and fish. So 
with our Indians. 

The Malayan-dyaks of Borneo, and others of the more 
warlike tribes, put showy feathers in their hair, and take a 
portion of the scalp from the head of the slain enemy as 
a trophy ; and so with our Indians. 

They wear their black hair loose and long, paint their 
faces in war-time, use the bow and arrow, are fond of tinsel 
jewelry, and never forget an inj ury, — all of which traits 
characterize American Indians. The above comparisons 
refer to the rustic tribes, however, rather than the higher 
classes of Malays. 

THE " FALL OF MAN." 

Under the droll drapery of ^Esop's Fables nestle lessons 
sunny with moral beauty ; so concealed in the Mosaic myth, 
" Adam's fall," there is a germ of truth. All through the 
East are moss-wreathed ruins, telling of golden ages and 
higher civilizations. 

" In the province of Kedu," writes A. R. Wallace, " is the 
great temple of Borobodo. It is built upon a hill, and con- 
sists of a central dome, and seven ranges of terraced walls 
covering the slopes of the hills, forming open galleries. 
Around the magnificent central dome is a triple circle of 
seventy-two towers ; and the whole building is six hundred 
and twenty feet square, and about one hundred feet high. 
In the terraced walls are niches containing four hundred fig- 
ures larger than life ; and both sides of all the terraced walls 
are covered with bas-reliefs carved in hard stone, occupying 



172 AROUND THE WORLD. 

an extent of nearly three miles in length. The Great Pyra- 
mid of Egypt sinks into insignificance," says Mr. Wallace, 
" when compared with this sculptured hill-temple in the inte- 
rior of Java." There are other templed ruins and inscrip- 
tions, remember, in Malay-peopled countries and islands, 
long antedating this. Who were the projectors? — who the 
constructors ? Ask the Malays : echo ! Appeal to history : 
it is silent as the chambers of death. 

THE RELIGION" OF THE MALAYS. 

In the thirteenth century, Mohammedan missionaries con- 
verted the Malays in the Straits of Malacca to Islamism, 
using persuasion instead of the sword. Their original reli- 
gion, however, was entirely different. John Cameron, F.R. 
G.S., assures us that " such Malays as have embraced none 
of the more modern religions believe in some divine person- 
ality, corresponding to God ; and a future life, where good 
men enjoy ecstatic bliss, and the wicked suffer purgatorial 
punishments." But " their religion," he adds, "is strangely 
mixed up with demonology. They believe that every person 
is attended by a good and a bad angel ; the latter leading 
to sickness, danger, and sin, while the good angel seeks the 
individual's health and happiness." In their " lives, they are 
influenced more by fear than hope." They propitiate the 
wicked angel and the evil spirits. It is only at death that 
they ask the especial care of their good angel. They stand 
in no fear of the transition. Some of their ruins indicate a 
relationship theologically to the sun and serpent worshipers. 

MALAY HOSPITALITY. — THE "ORANG-UTAN." 

" The higher classes of Malays," writes Mr. Wallace, " are 
exceedingly polite, and have all the quiet ease of the best- 
bred Europeans." To this I will add, they are very kind, 
warm-hearted, and hospitable. Calling at a Malacca-Malay's 
palm-thatched dwelling, we were at once treated to tea, 
fruit, cocoanut-milk, and durians. This latter fruit is quite 



COCHIN CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 173 

generally considered the choicest and most luscious fruit in 
the world ; and yet, like tomatoes, one must cultivate a taste 
for it. The odor of the shell is truly disgusting. The eat- 
able substance is of a yellowish creamy consistence, tasting 
like a mixture of mashed beech-nuts, bananas, onions, 
strawberries, pumpkin-seeds, and sweet apples. 

The children three, five, and seven years of age, playing 
about, perfectly nude, were quite shy of us. Though abso- 
lute nakedness in this climate is comfortable, the custom is 
quite too Adamic. These Mohammedan Malays circumcise 
between the years of eleven and fifteen ; and old and young 
strictly abstain from opium and liquors of all kinds. Mr. 
Hewick, Chief of Police in the Wellsley Provinces, accom- 
panying us into the country to see Malay life, amused us, 
when returning, by sending a baboon species of the monkey 
up a smooth, limbless cocoanut-tree to pick some fruit. 
The ingenious method the cunning brute devised to twist 
the nuts from the tree showed a striking intelligence. 

In the Malay language " muniet " is the term for monkey, 
" karra " for baboon, and " orang " for man. " Orang-laut " 
implies sea-people, or seafaring men ; " orang-gunung " is 
defined mountaineer, or a rustic, uncultivated man ; while 
•* orang-utan " signifies literally a man of the forest, or the 
aboriginal people. The famous " man-like ape," to which 
Darwinian sympathizers give this name, is never so called by 
the natives, but is known among all Malay-speaking races 
under the name of " mias." How easily words mislead, 
especially when an extreme theory is to be maintained ! 

Evolution — the great doctrine of evolution is true. But 
Darwin's straight-jacket method of interpreting it was not 
true. Man's inmost Spirit did not originate in, or spring up, 
from the monkey. Alfred R. Wallace is right- — follow him 
— not Darwin. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MALACCA TO INDIA. 

The little kingdom of Johore lies just across the straits 
from the isle of Singapore. Accompanied by our American 
Consul, Major Studer, a gentleman ever alive to the com- 
mercial relations of America, we called to see his majesty, 
the Maha-Rajah ; who, if he does not sit 

" High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind," 

has a fine palatial mansion, constructed in truly Oriental 
style. His " royalty " was absent, which left the secretary 
to do the etiquette of the palace. The drive across the 
island of Singapore, with the exception of the poor, vicious 
horses, was richly enjoyable. The Britains are famous in all 
foreign lands for excellent thoroughfares and an effective 
police. The Dutch are too rigid in their measures. 

This excellent road above referred to is dotted and lined 
with bungalows, plantations laid out in exquisite taste, bam- 
boo-hedges, and fan-palms, quite as useful as ornamental, 
called " the traveler's fountain." The out-jutting stems of 
these broad palm-leaves, collecting the night-dews, tender 
their cups of crystal water the following day to the weary, 
thirsting traveler. Surely God's living providence is every- 
where manifest. 



MALACCA TO INDIA. 175 

JOHORE. 

Reaching this unique city of five thousand, we became 
the guests of James Meldrum, many years in the country, 
and owner of the largest steam saw-mills in Asia, employ- 
ing five hundred men. His bungalow, situated upon a shady 
eminence, spans an extensive arc of enchanting scenery. 
" Bungalows," by the way, a term applied to all kinds of East- 
ern dwelling-houses having lofty ceilings and broad veran- 
das, are built with reference to ventilation and coolness. 

Mr. Meldrum saws the famous teak, as well as cedars, 
mahoganies, maraboos, kranjees, chungals, rosewood, sandal- 
woods, camphor- woods, &c. A report before me says, — 

" The Johore forests cover an extent of about ten thousand square 
miles, and contain upwards of one hundred different kinds of timber- 
trees. These forests are being opened up by his highness the Maha- 
Rajah of Johore, K.C.S.I., K.C.C.I., &c, who is constructing a wooden 
railway into the interior. It will pass through dense virgin forests 
abounding in all the various kinds of timber-trees known in the 
Straits." 

The Malay Maha-Rajah of Johore, being a strict Mohamme- 
dan, uses no wines, no liquors of any kind ; and, further, he 
will permit the existence of no " house of ill-fame " in his 
dominion. Just previous to our arrival, he had broken up a 
den of prostitution established in New Johore by some Cath- 
olic Chinamen. Jesuit missionaries had converted these 
Chinese from Confucianism to Christianity ! Is it strange 
that Mohammedans think Christians very immoral ? 

The Malays of these regions never, — no, never, drink 
intoxicating liquors of any kind. Such practices are forbidden 
by the Koran. Would not an infusion of Islamism into 
Christianity improve it, at least practically ? The Arabian 
prophet taught no scape-goat atonement, no salvation 
through another's merits. Neither do Mohammedans in their 
mosques have " infidels " to fan them while they worship. 
Not so .with Christians. In the Singapore English Church, 



176 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

built by convict-labor, sixteen "heathen" natives stand out 
under a scorching noonday sun on the " Lord's Day," pull- 
ing punkas to fan these ritualistic English Christians, while 
they drawlingly " worship God," saying, very sensibly, 
" Have mercy upon us miserable sinners." 

During this trip over to Johore, we saw monkeys leaping 013 
trees, birds of rich plumage, a young elephant, a huge, slimy 
boa-constrictor just killed by the wayside, and the fresh skin 
of a tiger, which, while covering the ravenous brute, had 
concealed the remnants of many a man. In his stomach was 
found part of a breastbone, and several human hands. Gov- 
ernment pays a handsome bounty upon tiger-killing. 

A JUNGLE. — TIGERS. 

What American has not read of the East-India jungles? 
Permit the pen to paint one. A jungle is a heavy forest of 
gigantic trees with a compact foliage of dark-green leaves. 
Under these grow up another tribe of trees, shorter, more 
umbrageous, and loaded with such wild fruit as mangosteens, 
mangoes, and jumbus. Beneath and around these again, 
there's a prolific growth never seen outside the tropics, — 
palms, rattans, ferns, and indescribable plants, literally woven 
together, like the "lawyer-hedges" of New Zealand, by a 
net-work of creepers and parasites. Such a forest is a 
jungle, the home of the tiger. I never passed one without 
thinking of tigers and boa-constrictors. Serpents — cold, 
slimy, treacherous, and poisonous — I loathe and despise. 
Eden's fable has nothing to do with this inborn dislike to 
crawling things. Men that tame and handle serpents, and 
women that pet poodle-dogs, reveal what they might as well 
conceal ! 

It was estimated, a few years since, that one man a day fell 
a victim to the crushing stroke of the tiger in Singapore, an 
island of about two hundred square miles. These tigers 
swim across the straits from Johore to the island. The dis- 
tance is about two miles. The tiger stealthily strikes, and 



MALACCA TO INDIA. 17 T 

seizes the person by the back of the neck. Like other wild 
beasts, he is too cowardly to face a man. The Malays have 
the saying, " If you will only speak to a tiger, and tell him 
he can get better food in the jungle, he will spare you." 

SPICY GROVES. — BEGGARS UNKNOWN. 

Descriptions of cinnamon-trees, clove-trees, and others of 
this nature, might be interesting. Let a brief sketch of the 
nutmeg-tree suffice. Handsomely formed, and beautiful in 
proportion, it grows from twenty-five to thirty feet high,, 
and is thickly covered with polished dark-green leaves, 
which continue fresh the year round. The fragrant blos- 
soms are thick, wavy bells, resembling the hyacinth or lily- 
of-the-v alley. When the fruit is ripening, it might be mis- 
taken, say the old cultivators, for the peach, bating the pink 
or yellow cheek. When the nut inside is ripe, the fruit 
splits down, remaining half open. If not now picked, it 
soon falls. On the same branch — as with the orange — may 
be seen the bud, blossom, and the ripening fruitage. Nut- 
ting-fields in the Singapore region have nearly gone to 
decay. A cureless blight has rendered their spice-gardens 
unprofitable. 

Want of energy in the Malay Islands, and other portions 
of the East, has become a proverb. There is little induce- 
ment to labor where Nature is so unsparing. All individuals 
are about as lazy as they can afford to be ! Two hours of 
daylight in the Malay Peninsula is enough for a native to 
build a decent "shanty," and thatch it. Beggars are un- 
known away from seaports and cities. They have but to 
lift the hand, to pluck plenty of fruit. Most delicious 
pine-apples sell for fifty cents a hundred in the Singapore 
market. 

VOLCANIC BELTS, AND MINERALS. 

One of the great volcanic belts of the globe stretches 
along across these Malayan Islands. The breadth of the belt 



178 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

is about fifty miles. Java alone has over forty active vol- 
canoes. Borneo and New Guinea are just outside of the 
volcanic zone. Peru and South- American coasts faintly com- 
pare with these islands in terrible lava upheavals. The 
Javanese eruption occurring at Mount Galunggong, in 1822, 
destroyed twenty thousand inhabitants. A gentleman just 
from Batavia informs me that there has recently been 
another serious convulsion upon the island. Instead of liquid 
lava, as at Vesuvius, heated sands, stones, and red-hot ashes 
were thrown up with great violence. " Why," is it asked, 
"do Europeans live upon these islands?" The love of 
money, is the only answer. Gold in this century is god. 

A granitic mountain-chain runs the whole length of the 
Malay peninsula. It has thermal springs, but no active 
volcanoes. The mountains are not over a third as high as 
those in Sumatra and Java. This region is famous for min- 
erals, — iron, copper, tin, and gold. Malacca and Siam are 
said to be the greatest tin countries in the world. 

I met several times " Charlie Allen," the young man 
who accompanied Mr. Wallace during his prolonged explora- 
tions in the East Indies. He had just come down from the 
Chindrass gold-mines in Malacca. These are forty-five miles 
from the old city of Malacca, and fifteen from Mount Ophir. 
They promise " rich," as Californians say. " Oh for Ameri- 
can energy to work them ! " exclaimed Mr. Allen. 

What interested me more than the quartz specimen he 
exhibited, was the description of an ancient, yet substan- 
tially built road during some important excavations. It lies 
embedded deep under a modern thoroughfare, yet revealing 
an entirely different kind of constructive conception. Who, 
what people, built it ? Echoing ages are dumb. 

bibd's-nest soups. 

As turtle-soup is a great dainty with English epicures, so 
are bird's-nest soups among Chinamen at Singapore and 
elsewhere. The Indian Archipelago, and adjacent rocky 



MALACCA TO INDIA. 179 

isles, are the harvest-fields for these delicacies. The iiests, 
a sort of gluey, gelatinous substance, seen in China markets, 
are found along the rocks, in deep and damp caves, and are 
the choicest if gathered before the birds have laid the eggs. 
The nests resemble in shape those of the chimney-swallows 
in America. The finest qualities of nests are when they 
are clear and white as wax : the poorest are those gathered 
after the young birds have flown away. 

THE UPAS. 

That terrible Graeva Upas, — the valley of poison, — writ- 
ten about many years ago by a Dutch surgeon at Batavia, 
and afterwards by others, without inspecting the locality, 
proved to be a hoax. True, there is a valley, grim, bare, 
and as destitute of vegetable as animal life, caused by the 
deadly nature of the carbonic and sulphurous acid gases that 
continually escape from the crevices and soils in this vol- 
canic region. There are numerous plants and shrubs more 
poisonous than the Upas. Geographies, as well as Bibles, 
^ced revising. 

BETEL-NUT. — GUTTA-PERCHA. -^COCOANUT-GROVES. 

The bewitching betel-nut, used by and so staining the 
lips and teeth of the natives, is common in Cochin China, 
Sumatra, Java, and tropical Indies. Its exhilarating fascina- 
tion is said to excel even tobacco. Penang is the more com- 
mon name of the nut ; accordingly Pulo-Penang signifies 
betel-nut island. While growing on the graceful and slightly 
tapering trees, they look something like nutmegs. When 
ripe, and broken into small pieces, the natives prepare them 
with the siri-leaf and the unslacked lime of shells. Though 
producing a dreamy, stimulating effect, it must necessarily 
injure the membranous surfaces of the mouth. 

Gutta-percha abounds in both Singapore and Penang. 
The Malays term the tree tuban. It grows large, has a 
smooth bark and wide-spreading branches. The tree is not 



180 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

only tapped to get the juice, but often literally girdled*, 
destroying the tree itself. This forest vandalism is now for- 
bidden. The juice — life-blood of the tree — is caught in 
coeoanut-shells, poured into pitchers made from the joints 
of large bamboos, and then conveyed to caldrons for boiling 
and the further preparations for sale. 

Cocoanut-groves, being planted in horizontal lines, pre- 
sent a most beautiful appearance. These trees, running up 
some forty feet, unbroken by leaf 01 branch, are roofed with 
deep green foliage. The nuts grow in clusters between the 
roots of the leaves and branches at the top. If not picked 
when ripe, they drop, and are broken. Planters of large 
groves tell me that the noise of falling nuts in night-time 
breaks the silence with sounds " weird and ghostly." Fall- 
ing upon the skulls of the natives, they sometimes break 
them. When the oil is sought, they are allowed to ripen. 
The nuts sell for a penny each. The watery milk within, 
them is considered as cooling and healthy as nutritious. 

ELRE-FLY JEWELRY. 

Lower races and tribes in all lands are fond of pearls,, 
precious stones, jewelry,- — display of all kinds. The Malays, 
unable to purchase diamonds, have a little cage-like fixture, 
in which they imprison a fire-fly. This, excited, continues 
to give out perpetual flashes, quite excelling in brilliancy 
the diamond itself. The natives are sufficiently humane to 
set them free when the evening party is over. The poor 
things are not, as some writers have said, impaled on golden 
needles, that, by increasing the agony, the glitter of the flash 
may be intensified. The flash has more the appearance of 
electricity than phosphorescence. But what an idea ! — im- 
prisoning harmless insects to attract attention, and minister 
to human var ity ! 



MALACCA TO INDIA. 181 

OFF TO CALCUTTA, VIA PENANG. 

Left Singapore, June 27, on the steamer, " The States- 
man," under the command of Capt. Valiant. This line — 
running between China and Calcutta — is engaged in the 
opium-trade. The accommodations are excellent ; both the 
captain and his interesting lady, Mrs. Valiant, striving to 
their utmost to make the voyage pleasant and homelike. 

Penang, a nearly circular island, off from the Malacca 
coast, contains some seventy thousand acres ; and its history 
is the history of the " British East India Company" in its 
efforts to get a foothold in the Malay Peninsula. The island, 
laying high claims to beauty of scenery, seems a mass of 
hills, rising like cones from the water's edge, near the sum- 
mits of which are the neat, tasty bungalows of the residents, 
surrounded by palms, pepper-vines, fruit-trees, and cocoanut- 
groves. In the harbor hardly a ripple dances upon the 
glassy waters. Crossing "it to visit Mr. Hewick, an official 
over in the Wellsley Province of Malacca, the phosphores- 
cent flames (when returning) flashing up at the dipping of 
the natives' oars, gave it the seeming of sailing through a 
sea of fire. Penang, like all the Oriental cities in these lati- 
tudes, is peopled with Malays, Chinese, Klings, and other 
Hindoo derivatives. The town covers about one square mile. 
The approach to it, through emerald isles, was magnificent. 

MOUNT OPHIR. 

Rounding the most southern point of land in Asia, and 
hugging the Malacca coast toward Burmah and India, we 
had a fine view of Mount Ophir, four thousand feet high. 
Whether this be the biblical Ophir, or not, is unimportant ; 
but who honeycombed the mountain with shafts ? who here 
searched for gold in the distant past ? This is an interesting 
inquiry. Of the location of the scriptural Ophir, nothing is 
known that will positively fix the geographical position. It 
was a. place with which the Jews and Tyrians carried on a 



182 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

lucrative trade in the time of Solomon, twenty-eight hun- 
dred years since. At this period the J ews were unacquainted 
with iron, knowing only bronze, silver, and gold. Their 
bronze they received from the Tyrians. Half barbarous, they 
had no commerce till David conquered Edom (or Idumea), 
giving them some coast on the Red Sea. The Jewish crafts 
that traded with Ophir may have been the " navy of Tar- 
shish ; " and this Tarshish may have been a Tyrian port on 
the Red Sea, — the part known, perhaps, as the Gulf of Suez. 

The celebrated German Orientalist, Lassen, places Ophir 
somewhere about the debouchement of the river Indus. 
His theory is founded upon resemblances between the He- 
brew and Sanscrit names of the commodities brought from 
Ophir. There is no resemblance, however, between the 
ancient method < f working the Ophir mines, and the copper 
mines bordering Lake Superior — worked by whom ? The 
mound-builders. But who were the mound-builders ? 

When — who by — and how were the Pacific Islands 
peopled, are still unsettled questions. It was my privilege 
to meet on this last voyage Hon. S. W. Baker, late Premier 
of Tonga, whose brain was an encyclopaedia of knowledge 
relating to the customs of the Malays and the Pacific Island- 
ers generally. He is now a resident of Auckland, New Zeal- 
and. His description of seeing the formation of a volcano 
near Tongatuba was thrillingly interesting. It was preceded 
by an earthquake shock. The volcano opened up from the 
ocean, and volumes of steam, of carbonic and sulphurous gas 
shot up in fiery jets over a thousand feet. Immense quanti- 
ties of matter were thrown up. The crater soon became two 
miles in circumference. Volcanos and islands are ever rising 
and sinking in the ocean. 



CHAPTER XV. 

SPIRITUAL SEANCES ON" THE INDIAN OCEAN. 

Out on the waters restless and sea-tossed, deprived of 
daily journals and libraries, how naturally the mind turns to 
that inexhaustible field of research, spirit-communion ! 

Dr. Willis, a medical spirit, controlling the medium, said 
in his off-hand, epigrammatic manner : — 

" Disease is obstruction. Vital phenomena are profound 
studies. The human system is interpermeated by a very 
complex network of nerves. The brain, comparable to a 
sounding-bell, echoes through these nerves the condition of 
every portion of the physical organism. This is why I 
touch the head in diagnosing disease through the Doctor. 
Certain nerves allied to the medulla oblongata throw their 
sensitive branches across the back of the neck. A current 
of air striking this part is quite certain to produce colds, 
catarrhs, and serious neuralgic affections. Wearing long 
hair, therefore, is a preventive. The ancients in Oriental 
countries understood this. ... I see no deleterious effects 
in your abstinence from meat-eating. And yet considering 
the formation of the teeth, with the make-up of the whole 
organic structure, I favor it ; that is, considering humanity 
as it is. The system requires oils, as well as materials for 
muscle. But animal oils are more clogging to the brain 
than vegetable. . . . Color affects the health. Red should 
never predominate in the sick-room, especially if the patient 
?s nervously sensitive. It is an excitant. Pale blue and 



184: AROUND THE WORLD. 

cream colors are quieting. Sunlight is a natural stimulant 
Pure air is indispensable. Diet, and the right use of water, 
are helps. The ancient Romans indulged in tepid baths, 
followed by sun-baths. The will-power is a wonderful 
restorative. Our treatment, including the above, is, you know, 
magnetic and medicinal. Chronic complaints require medi- 
cines : these we magnetize and vitalize. Nervous affections 
readily yield to magnetic treatment, providing mediums are 
healthy, and temperamentally adapted to patients. Promis- 
cuous mingling of magnetisms is deleterious, inducing ner- 
vous unbalance, and opening the way for obsessions. Those 
so inclined pursue the study of medicines in spirit-life, that 
they may benefit the inhabitants of earth." 

SEANCE n. 

Mr. Knight, entrancing, said, — 

. . . "I see, looking at the mental workings of your brain, 
that the extreme contradictions in the teachings of spirits 
disturb you. ... In previous conversations, we have told 
jon that the spirit-spheres — hundreds in number — are 
inhabited by those just adapted to them intellectually and 
morally ; and, as the spheres, such the aims and acts of 
the spirits peopling them. Death is not a Saviour ; nor does 
it produce any immediate, miraculous change. . . . Those 
basking in the higher conditions of purity, truth, and love, 
shed or impart the divine influence of the sphere from which 
they come. And the same law applies to the lower spheres. 
As there are evil-minded men, so are there evil spirits, self 
ish, scheming, wicked spirits ! And to offer suggestions 
relative to the means of avoiding the influences of these, is 
the object of my present visit. 

"I. In order to know men, you must try them : so to 
fathom the real purposes of spirits, try them, test them by 
rigid observation and patient experience ; and, further, 
study the effects they produce upon their mediums. 

" II, All mediums, not controlled by a fixed and reliable 



SPIRITUAL SEANCES ON THE INDIAN OCEAN. 185 

circle of three or more spirits, are subject to such dele- 
terious influences as low spirits may choose to throw around 
them. And the control of this class of spirits is often 
beyond the power of the guardian spirit, who may not have 
the advantage of an established circle. The immediate 
power of control lies not in superior intelligence or spiritu- 
ality, but in magnetic force, or the great will-power of the 
spirit. Entrancement is the result of the mesmeric influ- 
ence of spirits ; and it excels that of mortals only in this, 
that it proceeds from spiritual beings, relieved from the 
grossness of the flesh. The inference is, that persons hold 
ing indiscriminate intercourse with spirits through mediums 
unprotected by circles of pure, exalted spirits, are liable to 
be flattered, and to receive false communications from spirits 
under assumed names. 

" III. Guardian spirits with fixed circles, and deep desires 
to promulgate truth, seldom allow their mediums to be con- 
trolled by others than members of their own circle. Each 
mortal has a guardian spirit ; and the assistants of th?s guar- 
dian are properly denominated guides. A guardian spirit, 
giving communications from spirits outside the circle to 
mortals,- — his own circle acting as means of conveyance, — 
always states his non-responsibility relative to the message. 

" The laws of mental science should be diligently studied, 
and applied to mediumship. And all persons developing as 
mediums should seek from their guardian the immediate 
formation of a sympathizing circle in which they have faith, 
and upon whom they can rely. When this is not done, 
mediums, if not seriously injured, are often led into vice and 
crime, — crimes instigated by low, undeveloped spirits. And, 
further, they produce perversions, nervous diseases, obses- 
sions, and insanity. Entering upon the career of mediumship, 
therefore, is treading a pathway of danger and responsi- 
bility. Incipient development should be carefully guarded. 
Much depends upon mediums themselves. They should not 
only carefully remain away from improper society, but 



186 



AROUND THE WORLD. 



should keep their minds upon subjects high and spiritual, 
in prayer seeking such controlling intelligences as must 
necessarily benefit humanity. On the other hand, if they 
take the opposite course, — seeking such spirits as promise 
wealth by finding treasures, such as promise fame and 
worldly glory, or such as will pry into the secrets of others 
from selfish motives, — they will certainly be led to ruin. As 
self-denial, as abnegation of good to one's self, and earnest 
labors for others' benefit, gives that for which one has not 
sought, — happiness ; so the converse is true, that seek- 
ing for comfort and for self-aggrandizement at the expense 
of others, leads to one's utter defeat and destruction. 

" The reality, the philosophy, of spirit-control, then, are 
matters of almost infinite importance. And the subject 
should be approached with care and caution, and be used 
only by the wise, by the pure in purpose, for mental growth 
and higher spiritual attainments. These ends sought, and 
humanity will reap the rich reward for which the faithful 
few have" toiled, — the universal ministration of angels, the 
enlightenment of the races, and the redemption of the 
world ! " 

SEANCE in. 

A French Normandy spirit, claiming to have been in the 
higher existence some three hundred years, coming by per- 
mission of the circle, advocated these theoretical dogmas : — 

1. " There is no God ; nothing in the universe of being but matter, 
and the negative forces in matter." 

2. " Annihilation is true ; or, a conscious future existence, in the sense 
of endlessness, is a farce. Spiritual beings, by becoming more pure and 
etherealized, are finally absorbed in the great ocean of refined matter, — 
Bnuffed out, losing their consciousness and their identity." 

3. " Fatalism is a truth. Man is not responsible for an act of his life. 
All things, including men and their actions, are fated, or necessitated to 
be precisely as they are. Man is a thing." 

These exploded theories, once popular among atheists in 
France, are still taught by this shrewd, intelligent spirit. 



SPIRITUAL SEANCES ON THE INDIAN OCEAN. 18T 

They were grounds of sharp debate between us duiing several 
sittings. It was a drawn battle. Grant him his premises, 
and he will succeed admirably in the argument. Dispute 
them, demanding the proof of his proofs, and the foundation 
of his premises, and he fails to establish his untenable posi- 
tions. He is evidently sincere and conscientious, delighting 
to propagate his metaphysical theories in spirit-life. Can 
any one conceive of notions that spirits have not taught ? 
The lesson of these controversies was this : Spirits are falli- 
ble, and many of them long continue, though disrobed of 
mortality, to hug their earthly ideas and idiosyncrasies. 
Therefore, in listening to the teachings of immortals, we 
must be governed entirely by our intuitions and maturest 
judgment. Reason is the final judge. 

seance rv. 

The spirit Aaron Knight present, the following conversa- 
tion ensued : — 

Now that you have come, I desire your opinion upon the 
subject of my thoughts for the past few days. 

" I should be happy to hear the substance of them." 

Spending the winter in London, a few years since, I was 
deeply interested, listening to Mr. Tyndall's famous lecture 
upon " Dust," delivered in the Royal Institution. The pro- 
fessor clearly proved that the air is filled with fine atoms and 
living germs, which, inbreathed, enter the human body. He 
also explained how dust, and other unseen particled sub- 
stances, might be filtered away by means of cotton-wool tightly 
impacted, and worn over the mouth. And M. Pasteur, a 
French scientist, carrying the investigation a step further, 
made filters of gun-cotton, using that variety which is soluble 
in ether. The filters, having done their work, were dissolved 
in ether ; and the solution, when microscopically examined, 
was found to contain millions of organized germs, — living 
entities. These could not only be seen, but the genera and 
species could be detected. Therefore the very atmosphere 



188 AROUND THE WOULD. 

we breathe is full of air-borne germs and living life-cells. 
And these, for some wise purpose, must be continually 
entering into the human organization, must they not ? 

" Certainly : and you have suggested a subject of vast 
importance ; one relating to, if not involving, the very origin 
of living beings. Logically speaking, there is no creation, — 
that is, the creation of something from nothing. Surveying 
earth and spirit-life, I see only evolution or unfoldment ; 
and so pre-existence is true. The minutest monad in space 
is intelligent on its plane. Intelligence, or mind, is a result, 
or an effect of essential spirit and matter. But as these 
were never separated, and as the cause was eternal, so was, 
and so must be the effect also ; which effect was and is intel- 
ligence. There are no vacuums. Interstellar spaces are 
filled with the life-principle, with infusoria, cells, and unseen 
atoms. Nothing but life can sustain life. Infusorial animal- 
cula, and monadic germ-cells of life, pass into the cranial sen- 
sorium by organic attraction and imbibation. In the human 
organism they become more thoroughly vitalized ; and in 
the brain itself they receive necessary magnetic influences 
prior to the projected descent by will-power, through the 
spinal column and seminal glands, to their conceptive desti- 
nies. The brain, remember, cradles, rather than generates 
spermatozoic germs aflame with conscious life. These, pre- 
existent, were afai back in the measureless past aggregating, 
throwing off, accreting, pulsing, and passing through vari- 
ous occult processes preparatory to incarnation. As in the 
acorn, germinally hidden, lies the oak, so in the spermato- 
zoic life-germ, the future man." 

SEANCE V. — QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY THE SPIRITS. 

" The cross is the most angular of geometrical figures ; 
and, though connected with the martyred death of Jesus, it 
originated as an objective symbol in the phallic ages, and 
veferred primarily to generation." . . . 

" Emanations electic and magnetic, from the physical and 



SPIRITUAL SEANCES ON THE INDIAN OCEAN. 189 

spiritual bodies, extend outward from the person quite a dis- 
tance ; and, although indicating, they do not unmistakably 
index the mental characteristics. And so the aural lights, 
and odylic sprays from the brain, give only the general bent 
and tendency of the mind." . . . 

" Undoubtedly I could go to the planets ; but I've no desire 
to so do. My work as yet is connected with the earth. 
Parisi's researches lead him in such directions. I think he 
has visited Jupiter and other planets." . . . 

" The future is more important than the past ; the destiny 
than the origin of humanity. Though generally outlined by 
your guardian angel, your future, morally considered, is not 
irrevocably fixed. Man is a mental and moral, as well as a 
physical being. To all moral beings endowed with reflection, 
there is a field of moral action. You are now paving the 
highway your feet must press in spirit-life, and laying, too, 
the foundation-stones of the temple you will inhabit. That 
chain of pearls was not a mythic farce, but a reality put 
around your neck when reaching the years of accountability 
by Parisi Lendanta, who for a time was John's medium. 
These pearls magnetically reflect, otherwise spiritually mir- 
ror, the deeds of your whole life, — deeds and events that 
you will be necessitated to read when entering the higher 
state of existence. Personal identity implies memory, and 
memory retribution. This is the judgment, — the opening 
of the books." . . . 

" Living a celibate life for the purpose of boastingly say- 
ing, ' I am a celibate, I am pure : stand by, for I am holier 
than thou,' is selfish, and therefore morally deleterious; 
but if in laboring, on the other hand, to save others from pas- 
sion, from fleshly gratifications, and all that opposes chas- 
tity and absolute purity, men become virgin celibates pure- 
minded and spiritual, then are they truly angelic. Such, 
having been raised from the dead, walk in the resurrection.' 



190 ABOUND THE WORLD. 



SEANCE VI. 



Memory serving me, Mr. Knight, you once informed me 
that you had been privileged to attend councils of the glori- 
fied in supernal spheres, — that you there saw sages, seers, 
martyrs, and among them the Apostle John, with whom, as a 
pupil, you had held many interviews. This deeply interested 
me ; and, if consistent, will you answer certain inquiries 
relating to matters with which John, in his period of time, 
must have been conversant ? 

" Certainly, to the. best of my ability." 

Where was John born ? 

" In Syria. The Assyrians were once a great and truly 
enlightened nation, occupying a prominent position in Asia. 
But, by formidable combinations of foreign powers, their 
territory was conquered, and their national name abbreviated 
to Syria. He lived in that mountainous portion of Syria 
known as Judea ; which word was abridged from Jew-deity, 
so called because of Jewish reverence for Jehovah, the 
tutelary god of the Jews." 

Did he travel in different countries ? 

" Yes ; he traveled not only into the remotest provinces 
of Assyria, but even into Egypt and Persia. John was a lin- 
guist, highly educated for that period, and conversant with 
the teachings of Plato and Buddha. John and James were 
most intimately associated in their apostolic life. Occasion- 
ally John served as an interpreter for Jesus. 

" Returning from a long season of travel in the East, he 
found his parents in great disrepute from connecting them- 
selves with the Nazarenes, known at that time as Nazarretas, 
a poorer branch of the Jews, charged with sensualism, with 
holding intercourse with familiar spirits, and believing in the 
immediate coming of the Messiah. This sect originated long 
before Jesus' time." 

Did the prophet Daniel impress these visions upon John's 
mind? 



SPIRITUAL SEANCES ON THE INDIAN OCEAN. 191 

" No : John was not only highly inspirational, but was 
a trance-medium ; often leaving his body, and traveling as a 
spirit in the highest spheres. Those Apocalyptic images 
symbolized eras and principles. 

" "Written in the mystic language of correspondence, and 
little tampered with by scribes and Christian copyists, John's 
revelations are capable of an outer and inner interpretation. 
Inspirational men of those times understood them. Jesus 
and the apostles constituted a sort of secret society among 
themselves. The similarity of Daniel's and John's visions are 
traceable to oneness of nationality, and similarity of culture 
in the schools of the prophets." 

What were the " deeds of the Nicolaitans " that Jesus 
" hated " ? 

" John was Jesus' medium after he passed to the heavenly 
life from Calvary ; and he inspired John to write to the 
seven churches, i.e., the seven sympathizing assemblies of 
believers in Asia. The "deeds of the Nicolaitans " were 
hypocrisies and the " unfruitful works of darkness." Th,e 
clan originated with one Nicolas, who sought to compromise 
the principles of Jews and Christians. They were policy- 
men, full of flattery, and given to hypocrisies and licentious 
practices ; which ' deeds Jesus hated.' " 

Who was Melchisedec, King of Salem? 

" There were two, and hence the confusion. One was a 
spirit. The other, a distinguished personage remote from 
the tenting Abraham, was called the ' King of Peace,' because 
baptized of the Christ-spirit. To him Abraham paid tithes. 
The ancestors of Abraham were Aryans given to war and 
pillage." 

Who were the Essenians ? 

" A rigid and exclusive people, originally known as As- 
senians. Strictly constructing the moral law, they were 
stern reformers, very industrious, and inclined to be self- 
righteous. Those entering the inner court of the order were 
diviners and celibates. Joseph, John the Baptist, Jesus, the 



192 AROUND THE WORLD. 

apostles John and James, and nearly all of the disciples, were 
Essenes." 

Who were the spirit-guides of Jesus ? 

" He had a large circle, over two hundred attending 
spirits, — ' a legion.'' They were mostly from the earlier 
Jewish prophets ; and among them were Moses, Elijah, 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, as well as sages from India, China, and 
Persia." 

Do the prayers of sectarian Christians affect Jesus ? 

" Yes : the millions of Christians praying to and persist- 
ently calling upon Jesus, very slightly and indirectly affect 
him ; and I must say not pleasurably, because of incorrect 
ideas concerning him and his mission, and because they ask 
him to do what they themselves should do. . . . The 
scriptural records of Jesus are very imperfect. He did not 
whip the money-changers out of the temple, but so sharply 
rebuked them that they voluntarily left. Neither did he call 
men 'swine,' 'dogs,' and 'whited sepulchres;' but said, 
' If you persist in your unrighteousness, 'others will compare 
you to whited sepulchres.' . . . Jesus was overshadowed 
by spirit-presences from the sacred moment of conception, 
and therefore the prophetically expected of the Nazarettas. 
After the anointing, and descent of the baptismal Spirit, he 
was Jesus Christ, pre-eminent ; the greatest medium ever 
born upon this earth. And in him , as apostolically expressed, 
•dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily,' — that is, the 
full power of the Christ-spirit. And the races will ulti- 
mately acknowledge the sublimity of his precepts, as well 
as his moral superiority among the world's Saviours. The 
great moral battle in the future as we see it will not be 
between Spiritualism and true Christianity, but between 
Spiritualism and a cold, chilling, dreamless materialism. 
Christianity is becoming more broad, spiritual and tolerant, 
and Spiritualism is becoming more Christly and constructive. 
In the coming centuries, therefore, the twain shall become 
one." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

INDIA: ITS HISTORY AND TREASURES. 

England's flag waves over India ! The republic that is 
to come will be founded in justice, equality, and peace. 

We have spent the day rolling and tossing upon the Bay 
of Bengal. I shall spell it hereafter Bengali, emphasizing 
the last syllable. It deserves the bitter epithet. For three 
full days we endured a terrible monsoon-storm. It was a 
cyclone, save the rotary motion usually attending these hurri- 
canes. The frightened Jews aboard rushed for Moses and 
the Prophets, and began to intone the psalms in Hebrew. 
The wind, increasing, came in maddened gusts ; the waves 
surged and heaved ; the lightnings flashed ; the rain fell 
in sheets ; the fore-stay-sail struggled in tatters ; trunks, 
tables, upset ; the dishes jingled in scattered fragments ; 
the Fates and the Furies seemed, in fact, to have let loose 
the very artillery of the hells ! Oh, it was fearful ! The 
following day we passed a wreck. What became of the 
crew — what ? Our ship, under the command of Capt. Val- 
iant, behaved valiantly. It was a relief to sail into the 
Hoogly, one of the river-mouths through which the Ganges 
empties into the ocean. 

INDIA. 

Oh, marvelous country ! Land of tree-worship, serpent- 
worship, the lotus-flower, and the mystic Zm^-land of the 
ancient Vedas, and those unparalleled epics the Ramayana 



194 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

and the Mahabharata with its hundred thousand stanzas ! 
land of the ascetic Rishis, the eighteen Puranas, and the 
Tri-Pitaka of the Buddhists ! land of pearl-built palaces, 
templed caves, marble pillars, dust-buried ruins, walled 
cities, mud villages, and idolatrous worship ! These, all these, 
are among the sights, the lingering memories, of India's 
mingled glory and shame. 

When legendary Rome was a panting babe, and proud 
Greece a boasting lad, overshadowed by Egyptian grandeur, 
India was gray-bearded and venerable with years, worship- 
ing one God, and using in conversation the musical Sanscrit, 
a language not only much older than the Hebrew, but con- 
ceded by all philologists to have been the richest and most 
thoroughly polished language of the ages. Well may India 
have been considered the birthplace of civilization, and the 
primitive cradle-bed of the Oriental religions. 

APPROACHING THE LAND OF THE BRAHMAN. 

Steaming through wind and wave out of the Bay of Ben- 
gal, Indiaward, we entered the broad mouth of the sluggish 
Hoogly, one of the outlets of the Ganges, and conse- 
quently to Hindoos a sacred stream. Calcutta is something 
like a hundred miles from the mouth of this river. Though 
the banks are low and nearly level, the stretching jungle 
thickly shaded, and the cultivation only ordinary, the stately 
palms, cocoanut-groves, and luxuriant vegetation, along this 
winding Mississippi of the East, rendered the scenery decid- 
edly attractive. 

Just previous to reaching the city, we passed the royal 
mansions of the ex-king of Oude. This prisoner of state, 
though despising the English, as do the rajahs generally, 
maintains much of his kingly magnificence, and gets, besides, 
a yearly stipend from the English government. A Moham- 
medan in religion, preferring polygamy to monogamy, his 
social instincts are said to be decidedly animal. Several Eu- 
ropsan women grace — rather disgrace — his harem. Within 



INDIA: ITS HISTORY AND TREASURES. 195 

the inclosure of his private, high-walled grounds, he keeps 
quite a menagerie of wild beasts, and continues in repair a 
large artificial mound, said to contain two thousand hissing 
serpents. It was feared, at one time, that he would let loose 
beasts and serpents upon the city. 

CALCUTTA. 

Quite early in July, by the steamer " Statesman," we 
reached the capital of British India, — the famous City of 
Palaces. The impertinence of custom-house officers, dilated 
upon by some of our fellow-passengers, proved a fraud. 
They were simply gentlemen doing their duty. 

The hot, rainy season had just commenced. It was truly 
oppressive the first few days. In the city, and along the 
Delta of the Ganges, the mercury frequently rises to one hun- 
dred and twenty degrees, reminding one of the sun-scorched 
clime of Africa. In landing, half-naked coolies clamored 
loudly for our baggage ; actually they excel the New-York 
hackmen ! Dr. Dunn, fighting his way through the crowd 
bravely, soon saw the trunks safely aboard the G-harrie for 
" The Great Eastern." The rooms in these Asiatic hotels are 
high, commodious, and Oriental, even to the punkas. 

TERRITORY AND ENGLISH RULE. 

The empire of India, extending over a territory of a mil- 
lion and a half square miles, equals in size all Europe except 
the Russias. Swarming with two hundred millions of peo- 
ple, exhibiting almost an endless diversity of soils, produc- 
tions, and climate, the deltas of India's great rivers are 
befitting granaries for the world. And England, claiming that 
the sun never sets upon her dominions, holds direct rule over 
three-fourths of this vast country. 

Early in the seventeenth century, British cupidity, look- 
ing at the immense wealth of Indian kings and princes, cov- 
eted their possessions. Under the pretext of Christianizing, 
and other reasons, a cause for war was manufactured. Reck- 



196 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

less of justice, fraternity, and the New-Tests ment principles 
of peace, England, in brief, decided upon a war of conquest 
for territory and trade, for gold, diamonds, and precious 
stones. No historian pretends to whitewash Britain's course 
of crime and infamy in the East. Learned Brahmans under- 
stand that history well, and, understanding, secretly hate 
English rulership. Still they prefer Englishmen to Moham- 
medans for masters. Disguised in any way, however, slavery 
is slavery, — a condition to be hated ! 

The " mild Hindoo " is a common term in the Orient; and 
while the Hindoo is. mild, forbearing, peace-loving, and con- 
templative, the Englishman is ambitious, stern, and dictato- 
rial. The theistic reformer, Keshub Chunder Sen, sensibly 
said, in a late Calcutta speech, " Muscular Christianity has 
but little to do with the sweet religion of Jesus ; and it is 
owing to the reckless, warlike conduct of these pseudo- 
Christians, that Christianity has failed to produce any whole- 
some moral influence upon my countrymen." 

There was a monstrous mutiny in 1756 ; there have been 
minor mutinies since ; and, mark it well, there is destined to 
be another, eclipsing in blood and carnage all the others. 
The Aryan-descended Indians love liberty and self-govern- 
ment. 

WHENCE THE HINDOOS ? 

The Aryan tribes inhabiting Central Asia entered India 
by the northern passes, and descended first the valley of the 
Indus, and then that of the Ganges, attaining their full 
strength and development along the rich alluvial valley- 
lands of the latter river. They brought with them agricul- 
tural implements, some of the fine arts, and the elegant 
Sanscrit. " Brought it from where ? or in what country did 
it originate? " The inquiry, natural enough, shall be noticed 
hereafter. 

In this great and fertile country, the Aryans — primitive 
Hindoos — located themselves in comparative security. The 



INDIA : ITS HISTORY AND TREASURES. 1 97 

aborigines, supposed by some to be of " Turanian descent," 
fled, in many cases, to the mountain fastnesses before them, 
as though conscious of their physical inferiority. 

The Aryan type, including the pre-historic races of Cen- 
tral and Northern Africa, the Caucasians of Europe ; the 
Assyrians of Western Asia, and the fair-skinned, Sanscrit- 
speaking people who entered India from the north, devel- 
oped, wherever it settled, marvelous civilizations. The 
purest Aryan blood at present is found in Northern India ; 
but wherever within the bounds of the Indian Empire to- 
day you find light-complexioned, noble-featured Brahmans, 
you find direct descendants of the ancient Aryans. 

The non-Aryan natives, called, in the Rig- Veda, Dasyns, 
Rakshasas, Asaras, and others with outlandish-sounding 
names, were dark-complexioned, yet timid, spiritually -minded 
tribes. Remnants of them, ever the physical inferiors of 
their northern invaders, are still found in the mountainous 
districts of Interior and Southern India, known now under 
the names Todas, G-onds, Bheels, Itols, Iforkus, Bygds, 
Chamars, down to the Pa?'iahs. Some of these tribes have 
curly hair and protruding lips. The infusion of the Aryan 
element into the aboriginal stock took place rapidly ; and 
yet the observant traveler among them will come upon 
stratum after stratum, showing in a distinct manner the 
intermediate stages between the two races. Generally, the 
physical t3^pe diverges from aboriginal features and manners 
towards Brahmanical Hindooism. Some of these aboriginal 
races have so verged towards the status of Brahmanism that 
they have assumed the "sacred thread," claiming member- 
ship with the " twice-born caste." 

GROWTH AND LITERATURE OE THE ARYAN HINDOOS. 

None of the other Oriental countries have clung to so 
many of their primitive customs, retained so much of 
their early literature, experienced so few internal dissen- 
sions, or suffered so little from ancient Vandal invasions, aa 



198 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the Hindoos. Strongly sea-guarded on three points of the 
compass, the dangerous defiles and mountainous ranges 
along the northern boundaries of India presented formidable 
barriers to conquering hordes from Northern Asia. Accord- 
ingly, while the nationalities of Central and Northern Africa, 
in pre- Pyramidal times, as well as the populous countries of 
Central and Eastern Asia, were engaged in wars both civil 
and aggressive, destroying, so far as possible, all the historic 
monuments of antiquity, and exterminating every vestige of 
literature within the enemy's reach, the Aryans of India 
seem to have been left in comparative peace and isolation* 
— left to work out the problem of civilization and mental 
culture, unaffected by foreign influences or ravaging internal 
revolutions. 

The advancement for a time was all that could be desired. 
The Aryan Hindoos stood upon the world's pinnacle of 
progress. This was the era of the Mahabharata, 1300 B.C., 
of Manu the lawgiver, and Panini the great grammarian, of 
the Sarihitas and Brahmanas, of the Vedas and of the 
Sastras, all something like 1000 B.C. Brahmans educated 
in English colleges, and learned in the Sanscrit, insist that 
Homer modeled his verses after their ancient poets. 
Putting it plainer, they boldly affirm that Homer's Iliad 
was " prigged," — largely borrowed from the Mahabharata. 

Though this was the golden age of Aryan learning, mental 
friction was wanting. The national intellect, at this point, 
became either stationary, or shaded off into the metaphysical 
and the speculative. The inductive method of research was 
abandoned. Mystical theorizing ran rampant. Though the 
Vedas distinctly taught the existence of one Supreme Being, 
a dreamy mythology slowly sprung into existence, and 
fastened its fangs upon the national mind. Chieftains and 
heroes were made gods. Imagination painted, and tradition 
ascribed to them valorous deeds and marvelous attributes as 
unnatural as monstrous. The ignorant masses, carving their 
images in stone as keepsakes, finally fell to worshiping 



INDIA: ITS HISTORY AND TREASURES. 199 

fchem ; while the higher classes either cultivated philosophy 
and deductive abstractions, or mentally merged away into a 
passive self-meditation, looking for final rest in Nirvana. 

MEN IN THE CITY. 

The first movement, after landing in Calcutta, was to re- 
port in person to the lately appointed American consul, 
whom we found a most genial and sunny-souled gentleman. 
His family residence is Grand Rapids, Mich. Gen. Grant 
was singularly fortunate in his consular appointments at 
Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Melbourne. 

Having made the acquaintance of Keshub Chunder Sen 
in London, several years since, to inquire about Spiritualism 
and the progress of the Brahmo-Somaj in India, I sent him 
my card, receiving in reply a most cordial welcome to his 
country. Our future interviews, I trust, were mutually 
pleasing and profitable. Though singularly non-committal 
upon the causes of Spiritual phenomena, he extends the 
hand of fellowship to Spiritualism, because a phase of 
liberalism. 

Knowing something of the Unitarian missionary, Rev. C. 
H. A. Dall, through " The Liberal Christian," and being the 
bearer of a letter from Rev. Herman Snow of San Francisco. 
Cal., I called upon him at No. 24 Mott's Lane, Calcutta, 
where he has a flourishing school for boys, with several 
native teachers. He has joined, so I was credibly informed, 
the Brahmo-Somaj, preaching at present little if any. Uni- 
tarianism, American-born, had nothing new in the way of 
religion to send to the Brahmans of India. 

Busily counting money, Mr. Dall was at first not very 
communicative, although he warmed up a bit when the 
conversation turned upon progress, and the natural rela- 
tions existing between radical Unitarianism and true Spirit- 
ualism. Having read of "free love," "fanaticism," and 
other rubbish floating upon the spiritual river of life, if not 
prejudiced, he certainly lacked a knowledge of the Spiritual 



200 



AROUND THE WORLD. 



philosophy. Our chat became quite spicy. In uo residence, 
priestly presence, or princely palace, during these round-the- 
world wanderings, have I evaded or hidden my belief 
in Spiritualism. No one principled in truth, or fired with 
a spark of genuine manhood, would so do, even though 
shunned by the sham god of the age, — " society." Policy, 
cunning, and craft, are kin of the hells. Worldly gain is 
spiritual loss. 

Calcutta, founded by the " Old East India Company," 
near the close of the seventeenth century, on the site of an 
ancient city called Kali-Kutta, sacred to the goddess Kali, 
has a population of about eight hundred thousand, some 
seventeen thousand of which are Europeans. 



CITY SUBURBS AND SIGHT-SEEING. 

The gardens, the bright foliage, the luscious fruitage, and 
the palm-crowned suburban scenery generally, win at once 
the traveler's admiration. The Government House, the 
High Court, the massive Museum, yet unfinished, and other 
city buildings, are magnificent structures. The Post Office, 
imposing in appearance, is built upon the site of the notori- 
ous " Black Hole " of mutiny memory, where one hundred 
and forty-six prisoners, thrust into a room eighteen feet 
square, were left in a sultry night to smother and perish. 
Only a few survived. The act was infamous. The Maidan 
below the gardens, crowned with a Burmese pagoda, is the 
fashionable resort in evening-time. The drive skirts the 
river ; and, for gayety and costly equipage, Paris can hardly 
parallel it. Through the kindness of our consul-general, I 
was privileged with a carriage-ride in the gray of twilight, 
down the river, and around the square, to the music-stand, 
where the Queen's Band nightly discourses delicious music. 
The scenic surroundings, the blending of Occidental style 
with Oriental grandeur, can not well be described. Many of 
the costumes were singularly unique, and the social inter- 
course remarkably free from any stiff provincialisms. All had 



INDIA: ITS HISTORY AND TREASURES. 201 

fashions and styles of their own. The rich baboos — Hindoo 
gentlemen — occupied prominent positions in the gay pro- 
cession and motley gathering. 

Lower-caste Hindoo life is seen in the bazaars ; and 
though there are disgusting sights and rank odors, along the 
narrow native streets, we neither heard nor saw the Calcutta 
jackals so often described by romancing writers. Crows, 
however, may be numbered by myriads. Nestling at night 
in the ornamental shade-trees of the city, they engage early 
in the morning at the scavenger business, and often mistake 
the kitchen for their legitimate field of operations. Tall, 
stork-like birds, called " adjutants," also do scavenger-work. 
At night they perch upon the tops of the public buildings, 
standing like sentinels on guard. 

The city is watered from immense reservoirs. The 
natives bathe in them, wash their garments in them, and then, 
filling their goat-skins for domestic purposes, and slinging 
them under the arm, supported by a strap, they trudge 
moodily away to their employer's residence. Drinking- 
water is drawn from wells in a very primitive way. Women 
have but few privileges. They seldom appear in the streets ; 
and then, if married, they veil their faces. One is continu- 
ally reminded, while studying the Hindoo socially, of Old 
Testament manners and customs. 

RIVER SCENES. — JUGGERNAUT. — THE BANYAN-TREE. 

Occupying a place in Gen. Litchfield's barouche, we 
drove along, early one morning, by the river's side some four 
miles, witnessing the bathing and worshiping of the Hin- 
doos in the flowing Hooghly. Gesticulating, bowing, sprink- 
ling themselves, and intoning prayers, these worshipers 
counted their beads much as do the Catholics. Paying no 
regard to the Christian's Sunday or the Mohammedan's 
Friday, these sincere Hindoos hold in great reverence festi- 
val days of their gods. The English government grants the 
different. religionists of the country some sixty holidays dur* 
ing the year. 



202 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Unfortunately, we reached India just too late to see the 
yearly Juggernaut festival, during which the great idol-cai 
in Eastern India is drawn with such gushing enthusiasm. 
Believing devotees do not, however, throw themselves 
voluntarily under this idolatrous engine to be crushed, as 
falsifying churchmen have widely reported. "While the 
excitement is at a high pitch, careless devotees may acciden- 
tally fall under the rotating wheels, and perish. This 
actually happened the present year. And so similar acci- 
dents often occur on Fourth of July occasions in America. 
That a few impulsive fanatics in the past may have pur- 
posely rushed under the ponderous wheels, — much as 
Christian pilgrims in the Crusade, period walked through 
Palestine with bared feet, to die by the Holy Sepulchre, — is 
quite probable. Fanaticism has been common to all reli- 
gions. 

But crossing the river on this delightful morning, by the 
banks. of which nestled neatness and filth, — Christly and 
demoniac men in close proximity, — we were soon strolling 
through the Botanical Gardens, admiring tropical flowers, 
with the lilies white, golden, and purple, on our way to 
the crowning glory of the gardens, the great banyan-tree, 
alias the bread-fruit tree of the East. This grand old tree 
fully met our expectations, only that it bore berries about 
the size of acorns, instead of bread. The natives are very 
fond of them. While this gigantic tree is not tall, it is 
wide-spreading and symmetrically shaped ; and, though not 
an evergreen, it is clothed in a dark-green, glossy foliage, 
reflecting at sunrise a thousand vivid tints, varied as beauti- 
ful. This Calcutta banj^an-tree, throwing down to the soil 
one hundred and thirty creeper-like limbs, all forming 
trunks, — symbol of the American Union, many in one, — 
would afford shade or shelter in a light rain-storm for two 
thousand persons. No traveler in the East should miss of 
seeing it. Tradition says that Alexander's army of ten 




Toddy Palms of India. 



INDIA: ITS HISTORY AND TREASURES. 203 

thousand, in the fourth century B.C., sheltered itself, while 
in Northern India, under the far-reaching branches of a 
princely banyan. Just after leaving this kingly tree, there 
fluttered up before us, from a clump of date-palms a fine 
flock of green-plumaged parrots. 

Descriptions of one part of India will not serve for all 
portions of it. The country is immense. It is reported that 
8,000,000 perished during the late famine in India — but what 
is this in a country of nearly 300,000,000 ? The government 
allowed as little as possible to get out about the famine, as it 
might incite to mutiny. The Hindoos depend more upon the 
monsoons than upon cisterns or wells for water. A rain fail- 
ure means famine. Rice culture requires great flooding, and 
the Madras presidency has vast irrigation works. As these 
works increase throughout the country, carefully conserving 
the water, famines will cease. 

Calcutta has a population of nearly 900,000 ; some 20,000 
or more are nominally Christians. It has been, not inaptly, 
called the City of Colleges. It is reported that 10,000 Ben- 
galese students take their entrance examinations here every 
year. The religions of India are frequently in conflict. The 
Mohammedans are naturally aggressive. There are nearly 
60,000,000 of Mohammedans in India. They quite generally 
do not favor the National Indian Congress, thinking it too 
favorable to Brahminism. Buddhism is making an effort to 
re-instate itself in India. Mr. Dharmapa, a Buddhist monk, 
has already established the temple of the Buddha-Gya as a 
Buddhist shrine in Calcutta. Buddhism will certainly return 
to India and become a great spiritual power. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

INDIA'S RELIGIONS, MORALS, AND SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 

The higher classes of these Asiatics have fine-looking 
faces. Tall and rather commanding in person, easy and 
graceful in movement, they have pleasant, open counte- 
nances, dark eyes with long eyebrows, glossy black hair, — 
of which they seem proud, — thoughtful casts of expression, 
and full, high foreheads. The complexion is olive, shaded, 
according to caste and indoor or outdoor exercise, towards 
the dark of the Nubian, or white of the Northman. In 
Northern India they are nearly as fair as Caucasians ; and, 
what is more, English scholars have been forced to admit 
that the Hindoo mind, in capacity, is not a whit behind the 
European. In hospitality they have no superiors. The 
lower, oppressed classes, as in other countries, are rude, rus- 
tic, and vulgar ! 

As a people I have found the Hindoos exceedingly polite. 
When two Brahmans meet, lifting each the hand, or both 
hands, to the forehead, they say, " Namaslcar " (I respect- 
fully salute you). Sometimes the inferior bows, and 
touches the feet of the higher personage, the latter exclaim- 
ing, " I bless you: may you be happy /" The Hindoo, natu- 
rally mild, meek, and fond of peace, will sooner put up with 
oppression than engage in a battle of recrimination and vio- 
lence. An English ethnologist considers him sufficiently 
" womanly to be considered effeminate." Certainly, his 
patience and cool self-possession, inclining him to sail tran- 



INDIA'S religions and social characteristics. 205 

quilly along the placid waters of life, present a striking 
contrast to the impatience, ambition, and dictatorial spirit of 
Anglo-Saxons. Each and all, however, fill their places in 
the pantheon of history. 

THE KALI GHAUT AND SLAIN GOATS. 

Religion, when unenlightened by education and unguided 
by reason, degenerates into superstition. The Kali temple, 
situated in the suburbs of Calcutta, sacred to the ugly-look- 
ing, bloodthirsty goddess Kali, was to me a deeply interest- 
ing sight, because showing unadulterated Hindooism in its 
present low, degraded state. The shrines and the altars, 
the flower-covered ling, and the crimson yard all wet and 
dripping with the blood of goats sacrificed at the rising of 
the sun, forcibly reminded me of the Old Testament sacri- 
fices offered as sweet-smelling savors to Jehovah, the tute- 
lary god of the Jews. The bowing of the face to the earth, 
the kissing of cold stones, the smearing of the face with 
mud, the liturgical mutterings, and the howling beggary by 
the wayside, were all repulsive in the extreme. The temple 
was only a coarse, ordinary structure. Being Christians, we 
were not permitted to pass the threshold. These temples 
are not constructed, as are churches, to hold the people ; but 
rather as imposing shelters for the gods, priests, and sacrifi- 
cial offerings. The worshipers around them are generally 
of the lower castes. Conversing on the spot with one of 
these officiating Brahman priests, he assured me that the 
throng present did not worship the Kali image. " It is a 
symbol," said he, " leading the mind to the higher and the 
invisible." Doubting his statement, and pondering, I silent- 
ly said, Mere is retrogression, for the most ancient of the 
Vedas taught the existence of one infinite God. The Ori- 
entalist, Prof. Wilson, says, " The Aryans believed in one 
God, who created the world by his fiat, and organized it by 
his wisdom." After the composition of the first Vedas, 
with the post-Vedic priesthood, came mythology, and the 
different castes. 



206 ABOUND THE WOELD. 

THE BURNING GHAUTS. — CREMATION. 

How are the dead best disposed of ? Certain American 
Indians, lifting their dead warriors into forest-trees, leave 
them to assimilate with the elements ; Christians inter the 
mortal remains of their loved ones beneath the turf; Per- 
sians expose the bodies of the dead to the sun on their 
" towers of silence," while the Hindoos burn theirs in c/hauts 
consecrated to this purpose. Many scientists and hygienic 
reformers consider the last the preferable method. With 
Gen. Litchfield for guide, we repaired one afternoon to the 
ashy ghaut of flame to witness the burning of the dead. 
Entering the brick-wall-inclosed arena, the eye fell upon 
several piles of smoldering ashes ; while near by was the 
corpse of a pleasant-faced young girl of some eleven years, 
awaiting the priestly preparations for burning. The red- 
paint spot on the maiden's forehead indicated that she was 
married. A tearless mother sat by the rude bier, with a 
naked- babe at the breast. A sad stillness pervaded the 
scene. When the dry hard-wood, intermixed with light- 
sticks of bamboo and sandal, was laid across the shallow 
trench, and the pile ready for the cremation, the priests 
anointing the head with oil, and sprinkling the body with 
sacred water, placed the poorly-clad and ghastly corpse upon 
the rough pyre. Then, bending the limbs to occupy as little 
space as possible, and putting seeds, boiled rice, and bananas 
to the mouth, the lighted torch was applied to the husky 
bamboo. Soon the fire, flame, and smoke, curling and 
hissing around the sandal-scented pile, transformed the 
organized dust to its original dust and ashes. During the 
burning, the priests paced around the fiery pyre, chanting 
their prayers of consolation. Thousands flock to the Ganges 
to die and be burned. Nothing can be sweeter than for a 
Hindoo to die with his eyes resting upon the sacred river. 
The funeral pyres of the wealthy are made of the sandal- 
tree, spice-wood, fragrant flowers, incense, and ointments; 



India's religions and social characteristics. 207 

and, while the body is being consumed, priests and distant 
friends chant the Rig and the Sama Vedas. The immediate 
mourners stand around, dressed in white. Often the ashes 
are gathered up, and preserved in urns. 

HOW shall we dispose of our dead? 

Touching the removal of the dead, these have been the 
common methods : interment, exposing upon towers of 
silence, mummification, and incinerating or burning upon 
the prepared pyre. Considering the loathsome changes of 
decomposition, with the liberation and discharging of poi- 
sonous gases into the atmosphere, the burying of deceased 
bodies is open to serious objections. It is well known that 
sulphuretted and phosphuretted gases are active poisons ; 
and their influence, when breathed even in infinitesimal 
quantities, must be deleterious to health. Dr. Walker, a 
London surgeon, shows in his " Gatherings from Graveyards," 
that from the surface of the ground, above dead bodies, 
there are continually rising poisonous miasmas. These 
impregnate and infect the germ-cells and dust of the air 
breathed ; and thus disease is borne upon the winds. There 
are few unhealthier places than the cemeteries of crowded 
cities. In them epidemics and pestilences often originate. 
People should avoid rather than visit them. In the early 
history of Judaism, to merely touch a dead body rendered 
the person "unclean for seven days." 

Extravagant coffins, pompous ceremonies, costly monu- 
ments, gloved priests, expensive mourning apparel, and 
bearing corpses long distances for burial, all violate the 
genius of that Spiritual philosophy which sees that the 
spirit 

' ' Sings now an everlasting song 
Amidst the trees of life." 

The opposition of churchmen to cremation arises from 
their theological belief that graveyards are temporary resting- 



208 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

places for bodies awaiting the trump of the resurrection. 
It is evangelical teaching, that the departed are " locked in the 
embrace of death ; " that they have " fallen asleep in Jesus ; " 
or have died "in the hope of a glorious resurrection" of 
their decomposing, putrefying bodies. As the shirt of Nes- 
sus, so clings superstition to the sectarist. The tendency 
of solid thinkers, however, is turned towards cremation, 
because a quicker method of turning dust to dust, as by the 
" refiner's fire " of Malachi ; because less expensive than 
burial ; because conducive to the general health ; because 
preserving portions of the ashes in urns is less costly than 
gravestones ; and because it obviates all fear of being 
buried alive. Science will readily devise means to deodo- 
rize the gases given off during the process of burning ; 
while the ashy dSbris will the more readily revert back to 
usefulness as fertilizers of the soil. 

CASTE, AND BRAHMAN PRIESTS. 

Under any sky, caste is an unmitigated curse. Buddhism 
in the sixth century B.C. was a brave inspirational protest 
against Brahmanical assumption and caste. Though Buddh- 
istic preaching and practice quite checked this caste system 
for a time, it revived again with the revival of Brahman- 
ism, 200 B.C. ; and, intensified by an unrelenting social 
despotism, it is to-day the scourge of India. Women feel 
the chains more keenly than men. This great nation is slow 
to feel the pulsations of progress. English rule has done 
little, nothing, to tone down or overthrow the caste-venom of 
the ages ; and how could it, when caste in English society 
is nearly as marked as in Hindostan ? 

This social pest pervades all gradations of life in India. 
Each servant has his own sphere, and out of it he will not 
budge. This necessitates in wealthy English families a large 
retinue of servants. Brahmans, though sometimes poor, 
never "sink" to be tradesmen! They are generally clerks 
and draughtsmen. And then there is the messenger, the 




J U6»l\. 



Taj Mahal, Agra. 



INDIA'S RELIGIONS AND SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 209 

butler, the cook, tailor, coachman, market-man, washerman, 
palanquin-bearers, sweepers, and others, down to pariahs. 

As is well known, there are four general castes, — Brah- 
mans, priests and writers ; Chattries, soldiers ; Vyshes, mer- 
chants ; and Sooders, tradespeople and toilers, — with scores 
of subdivisions. Castes never intermarry, though there is 
occasionally an elopement. All Brahmans are not priests; 
but all priests must be Brahmans. When a Brahmanian lad 
reaches the age of nine, a thin, light cord, called Janeo, is 
given him after religious ceremonies and a family festal 
feast. This, going over the right shoulder, is continually 
worn around the body. It is symbolical. From the time of 
its adjustment by the priest, he must abstain from defilement, 
and engage in stated bathing and worship. Brahmans, living 
abstemiously, eating no meat, ignoring war, avoiding the 
sight of human blood, drinking no liquors, and punctually 
attending to worship, are considered, by the Hindoos, holy 
men. These Brahman priests, called Shastris, read the Vedas 
and the laws of Manu to the people. They also preside at 
festivals, celebrate marriages, and affix the sacred cord upon 
the young. 

If a Brahman becomes defiled, losing caste, it can only be 
regained by the most mortifying penances, and submission to 
a tedious system of purification. We saw one of these 
unfortunates doing penance by crawling serpent-like on the 
ground, and then rising and falling again ; he actually meas- 
ured his length in the streets on his way to the temple. The 
poor dupe was pitiably filthy. After his penances comes the 
bathing for purification. 

India originally rooted her caste-system in the priesthood ; 
England based her caste upon ancestral "blue-blood;" 
while America is grounding hers upon wealth. The prin- 
ciple is abominable, and means just this: three men are 
ascending a ladder ; the middle one licks the dust from the 
boots of the one above him, and kicks the one below him ! 



210 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

VILLAGE LIFE. — BATHING IN THE GANGES. 

The longer that missionaries and merchantmen remain in 
the " land of Ind," the more do they become attracted to 
the people, and attached to the country. Old men residing 
in India can hardly be induced to return to England. Book- 
making travelers, of the Kev. Prime school, are shamefully 
partial in their descriptions of the effeminate Orientals. It 
is chronic with these clergymen to write contemptuously of 
the "heathen." Idolatry in any form is deplorable ; but it is 
just as absurd to idolize a booh labeled " holy," as a bit of 
carved stone. 

The native Indians are not only exceedingly social, but 
trusting and reverential. They are not as moral, however, 
as they were in the days of Warren Hastings and Sir Wil- 
liam Jones. Their habitations, afar back from the great 
cities, are all clustered in villages. None reside by them- 
selves on farms. Ditches, rather than fences, indicate bound- 
aries. Many of their houses are mere mud hovels, the 
flooring matting, the furniture scarce and oddly-shapen. 
The wealthy clothe themselves in costly apparel ; while the 
dresses of the poor are mere breech-cloths, the children 
sporting in utter nakedness. Wages are exceedingly low. 
Women do outdoor work the same as men, even to the 
carrying of dirt in baskets upon their heads, where railroads 
are in process of construction. 

Saying nothing of the filth of the poverty-stricken classes, 
the Hindoos, as a nation, are noted for physical neatness. 
Watching them, the other morning, by the river, I silently 
said, " Your bathing is as natural as your breathing." Brah- 
mans frequently bathe three times per day. The Ganges* 
banks, along the Ghauts, are often lined by the faithful 
before sunrise, performing their ablutions. The women are 
clad in loose, robe-like garments ; the men are nude, save 
close-fitting lingatees. These Brahmans, by the way, wear- 
ing shoes open upon the top, bathing frequently, being 



INDIA'S RELIGIONS AND SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 211 

thorough vegetarians, and considering themselves, in conse- 
quence, physically sweet and pure, complain that Europeans 
enr't an unsavory smell — a filthy, beef-eating odor — from 
their persons, exceedingly offensive and loathsome to all true 
Brahmans. The Shakers of Mount Lebanon are no stricter 
peace-men or vegetarians than are these high-caste Brah- 
mans. Often, at the family table, Hindoos stop eating for a 
few moments, to chant Sanscrit sloka — a sort of jolly thanks- 
giving song. 

Genuine Hindoos wear neither pantaloons nor coats, but 
dhotars. Parsees wear trousers, robes, and tall, pyramidal 
shaped hats ; and Mahommedans, long beards and turbans. 
Noting these costumes, the prominent races of India are 
easily distinguishable. 

The earnest desire of even the lower castes to secure an 
English education is manifest by their studying along the 
public streets in Calcutta hj gas-light. This is a nightly 
practice. Such Brahmans as have acquired an education 
teach others gratuitously. Temperate themselves, wonder- 
ing at the liquor-drinking customs of Christians, and the 
downright drunkenness of Western nations, they even blame 
Jesus for " turning water into wine." 

Out of the cities, profanity is unknown among the Hin- 
doos. They have too much reverence for the Christian's 
" Our Father," and for their own gods, to curse and profane 
their names. Wealthy Hindoos have their favorite symbol- 
gods in their houses. A certain room is set apart, flower- 
perfumed, and consecrated to the household deity, once a hero 
or saint. On festival days of remembrance, they invite in 
their European acquaintances. Departing, they put garlands 
upon their necks, and throw flowers at their feet. In courts 
of justice, Hindoos brought upon the stand make a solemn 
affirmation. If there are doubts of their speaking the truth, 
" they swear them by the Ganges, or the sacred Toolsi- 
flower." For some of these singular customs, I am indebted 
to a personal acquaintance, seven years in India, inspector 



212 AROUND THE WORLD. 

of schools in Ommeraottix, — famous in England only as a 
cotton-market. 

THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 

No place in Calcutta so completely chained me as the 
Royal Asiatic Society, with its Museum of Ancient Art and 
Sculpture. If the command had read, " Thou shalt not 
covet thy neighbor's library," I should long ago have com- 
mitted the " unpardonable sin." That eminent scholar, Sir 
William Jones, who went to India in 1783, established the 
institution, and Warren Hastings was the first president. 
In this immense collection of volumes, manuscripts, scrolls, 
and unread Oriental rolls, are treasured the priceless 
memorials of the past. The original building, long ago over- 
flowing with its shelved lore, necessitated the storing of 
manuscripts elsewhere, with many of the precious relics. We 
found the assistant secretary, a native Hindoo, a most schol- 
arly and gentlemanly man. Gladly we exchanged several 
books, his treating of Brahmanism, and ours of Spiritualism. 
All library-books were free to us during our stay in the city. 
But time was flying. Longingly, regretfully, we left this 
library, — a very monument of research and reflection, — to 
penetrate the heart of the country. It was nearly nightfall 
when we left the City of Palaces, crossing the Hoogiy to 
Howrah, taking the East-India Railway train for the north 
and west. The depot was dimly lighted, the confusion 
disgusting, but the cars cool and comfortable. Travelers 
by English railways painfully miss their accustomed sleep- 
ing-cars. 

UP THROUGH THE COUNTRY. 

The railroad extends along the Ganges Valley up the 
country in a north-westerly direction, and ultimately reaching 
Allahabad, between the Ganges and the Jumna, where these 
rivers form a junction. They both rise in the Himalayas. 
The scenery, with its vast unfenced rice-fields, clumps of 



India's religions and social characteristics. 213 

ieeply- wooded jungles, hedges of cactus, grazing herds, and 
nestling native villages, was decidedly attractive, though 
dulled by sameness. Occasionally broad, rolling ridges 
reminded us of our fertile prairie-lands in the West. Though 
camels and elephants are pressed into farming-work, hump- 
shouldered Asian bullocks do most of the plowing, rather a 
light scratching of the soil. The flocks of sheep along the 
way were, with hardly an exception, black. Shepherds 
with bamboo rods, instead of " crooks," tended them. 
Northern India produces large quantities of wheat and corn. 
The cultivation of the Ganges Valley is of an inferior 
kind. This must necessarily continue till the Hindoos 
become landholders, owning the proceeds of the fields they 
cultivate. Though the vast plains of India have scattered 
groves of acacia, gua,va, mango, palms, and other Oriental 
trees, there is a destitution of deep, dense forests, from 
the fact that, in past centuries, they were ruthlessly cut, and 
the fields tilled to support the over-population of the coun- 
try. The telegraph-poles along the way are either of iron 
or stone, to prevent destruction by white ants. The prying, 
greedy nuisances soon found their way into our trunks. 

BENARES THE BLESSED. 

Reaching Mogul Serai Junction, we were soon transferred 
to the branch-road leading to the river whose waters were 
anciently thought to insure eternal life. Tread lightly, 
speak softly ; this is the winding Ganges, and that magnifi- 
cent and moss-crowned city on the western bank, with its 
temples, mosques, palaces, tapering domes, sacred shrines, 
and the Golden Temple of Siva, — guardian divinity, — is 
Benares, holiest city of the Hindoos ! 

All sincere religionists are to be respected. What Mecca 
is to the Mohammedan, Jerusalem to the Christian, and 
Rome to the Catholic, Benares is to the Hindoo ; and the 
Ganges, that washes its feet, is the Eden river of immortal 
life. The grayed pen of antiquity failed to record the 



214 AROUND THE WORLD. 

names of its founders. But, full two hundred years before 
the Grecian Plato discoursed in the groves skirting classic 
Athens, Benares was summering under the sunshine of her 
palmiest days, boasting of seven hundred flourishing semi- 
naries of learning, with ambitious students from all portions 
of the Orient. Here metaphysicians, both Brahmans and 
Buddhists, held their discussions upon philosophy, the duty 
and destiny of humanity ; and, in all probability, no keener 
logicians ever met upon the field of controversy. 

The city of Benares, — anciently called Kasika, — having 
five thousand sacred shrines, is supposed to number some 
five hundred thousand inhabitants ; but during festivals, 
or in the season when pilgrims flock thither, the population 
is greatly increased. Sekrole, the European part, about 
three miles from the old city, is handsomely laid out with 
government buildings, two English colleges, finely shaded 
streets, and a broad esplanade for military practice and 
display. 

The "mention of Sekrole must ever remind us of the hos- 
pitality and favors of Dr. Lazarus and his estimable family. 
His son, a collegiate youth, aflame with genius, informed us 
that his college class had quite a number of natives, ranging 
in years from sixteen to nineteen, nearly all of whom were 
married, some being the fathers of two, three, and four chil- 
dren. " Do these Hindoos keep up with their classes ? " we 
inquired. " Certainly," said this student : " they even excel 
in mathematics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy, and 
would be wranglers in English colleges." 

EUROPEAN METAPHYSICS OLD IN INDIA. 

An English professor in Queen's College, Benares, asssured 
us that, reading of new methods in metaphysics, or recent 
mental phenomena in Germany considered new, and referring 
them to the pundits (learned Hindoos in Benares), they 
would turn to their Sanscrit scrolls, and, finding the same 
formula in metaphysics, or similar phenomena, they pro- 




Hindoo Fakir. 



India's religions and social characteristics. 215 

nounce them old; and then, smiling among themselves, 
would add, " Western scholars are tardily following in the 
footsteps of our sages who lived full three thousand years 
ago." 

The streets of Benares, as in all old Asian cities, are ex- 
ceedingly narrow ; but the palaces of the wealthy, the mossy 
ruins, the massive masonry fringing the river, and the mag- 
nificent architecture, gorgeous even in decay, beggar descrip- 
tion. Taking an open dinghy, and drifting down the Ganges 
one morning by the city, we not only saw floating corpses, 
but saw them bring their dead to the burning Ghaut ; saw 
them take the muddy waters in their mouths ; saw them 
perform their religious ablutions and immersions, expecting, 
like sectarian Baptists, to wash away their sins ; and saw them 
bring their offerings, and lay them upon the altars of their 
gods ; and then, climbing a long stone stairway, we went up 
the Mohammedan Man-Mandil, on the roof of which are 
astronomical charts, drawn by old Indian sages ; then to the 
Golden Temple, the domes of which are literally washed 
with gold ; and then to the Monkey Temple, sacred to 
Durgha, where hundreds of monkeys are kept and petted, 
if i>ot worshiped, by the lower-caste Hindoos. 

EASTERN FAKIRS. 

Like the dervishes of Islam, these fakirs go by various 
names, and belong to different orders. Some continually 
chant praises to Vishnu. Others, inflicting tortures upon 
themselves, engage in constant prayers ; and others still seek 
to suspend the breath, restrain natural desires, and abstract 
the mind, preparatory to deeper communion with Brahm. 
While smiling at their superstitions, let us not forget their 
sincerity. Their subdued hearts seem to continually sing 
this sad refrain, — 



: Oh ! -where shall rest he found, — 
Rest for the weary soul? " 



216 ABOUND THE WOELD. 

One of these fakirs, stopping for a night in a quiet Hin- 
doo village, is received with profound respect. They con- 
sider him a holy man ; and, after washing his feet, they supply 
his wants. Some of these ascetics, renouncing homes, giv- 
ing away their propertj^, fast, pray, sleep on beds of stone, 
and practice other severe austerities. 

During our second day's wanderings in Benares, we saw 
in the street, under a burning sun, one of the Hindoo fakirs, 
— a Grosain, holy beggar ! This branch of fanatics do 
penance and work merit for others, by standing on one foot, 
or holding up one hand, for a term of years ; repeating the 
while pleading prayers. The one we saw, sitting cross- 
legged, with a three-forked tripod, by his side, was exceed- 
ingly filthy. His coarse, uncombed hair was sprinkled with 
ashes, rice, leaves, and lotus-flowers. He kept the index 
finger open and fixed ; his body, nearly naked, was smeared 
with clay ; his ghastly eyes, almost closed, were turned up- 
ward ; and he seemed striving to cease breathing. He speaks 
to no one, but " aims," said Hindoo bystanders, " to do 
works of merit, separate the soul from the body, and com- 
mune with God." The next morning, with one of the 
Benares missionaries, we strolled away some four miles, to 
the ruins of Sarnath, once a very extensive Buddhist estab- 
lishment, supposed by some to have been the birthplace of 
Buddha ; a grand old monument, with its architectural 
designs and elegantly carved images, still standing, and com- 
memorating the event. We confess to admiration and ven- 
eration for such time-defying ruins. But why so dumb, O 
tongue of tradition ? Speak, and tell us by whom, and for 
what purpose, were these acres of templed stone and mighty 
ruins once built ! 

ALONG THE WAY TO BOMBAY. 

It is fifteen hundred miles, by rail, from Calcutta to Bom- 
bay, the two rival cities of India. Previous to reaching 
Bombay from Jubbulpore, famous for marble rocks, there is 



India's religions and social characteristics. 217 

mountain scenery sufficiently bold and diversified to show a 
striking contrast to the valley of the Ganges, and others of 
India's lowlands through which we had passed. The coun- 
try now rougher and higher, the cultivation of the lands 
changed, becoming better as we approached the western 
^oast, rice-fields giving place to wheat, millet, and other 
grains. In Northern India, corn (Indian maize) does finely. 

There is an extensive network of railroads in this coun- 
try ; and, what may seem singular, they are liberally patron- 
ized by the natives. Brahmans, Mohammedans, Sikhs, and 
poor Christians, rush into the " second-class " cars, riding as 
cozily as the caged "happy family" of Barnur? memory. 
The steep grades, dark tunnels, dancing cascades, and heav- 
ily-wooded hillsides, reminded us of home scenery in New 
England. 

Reaching Bombay in the waning part of the day, a glance 
convinced us that it was a seaport mart, aflame with busi- 
ness. Numbering over six hundred thousand inhabitants, 
this city is considered by the unprejudiced the most stirring 
and progressive of any in India ; while the Parsees, whose 
forefathers brought their holy fire with them from Persia 
in the seventh century, now constitute one hundred thou- 
sand of the city's population. Acquisitive and enterprising, 
much of the mercantile traffic of the East is under their 
management. As there are no beggars among Shakers, 
Quakers, and Jews, so there are none among the Parsees. 

Going out leisurely upon the esplanade in early evening, 
the streets are thronged with multitudes of Hindoos, Mus- 
sulmans, Parsees, Indo-Europeans, English half-castes, with 
occasionally a straggling American ; and all either on foot, 
on horseback, or in gharries, or queer, gaudily-decorated and 
covered-in carriages drawn by bullocks. Costumes are gay 
and varied. Jewelry, even to rings in the nose, is worn in 
costly profusion. Wealthy Hindoos are lavish in dress, pre- 
cious stones, pearls, and diamonds. The bazaars here, with 
their narrow streets, and filth, their trade and traffic in trim 



218 .AROUND THE WORLD. 

kets. silks, brocades, &c, are but a repetition of those in 
all Asian cities. 

Bombay, built upon a cluster of islands connected one 
with the other and with the mainland by causeways, form- 
ing a sort of peninsula, and fanned by invigorating sea- 
breezes, is considered the most desirable residence for 
Europeans in India. The city is supplied with excellent 
water from Vehar Lake, some two miles out, at the foot of 
the Salsette Hills. Rich Europeans, and some of the mis- 
sionaries, reside at the fashionable suburb, Malabar Hill, 
from December to February ; but during the rains and hot 
weather, from June to September, they migrate to the high- 
land plateaus and cool mountains. 

Jesus, worn' and weary under Syria's scorching skies, went 
up on to the mountains, not to escape the heat, and do a bit 
of cozjr lolling around champagne-tables with Peter, James, 
and John, but to pray, and to heal the sick. It is cleliciously 
comfortable to be a " Christian " in the nineteenth century. 
But what about that old apostolic word, the "cross"? — 
" bearing the cross," and suffering for the " truth's sake " ? 

ORIGIN OF BRAHMANISM. 

The Aryans, more properly Ari/as, meaning, in the Zend 
language, honorable men, — occupying the high table-lands 
of Central Asia, known in later times as the Plateau of 
Iran, — left in the pre-historic past their ancient agricultural 
seats, traveling westward and southward in the character 
of emigrants, explorers, and conquerors. 

The Aryan conquest of Hindostan, effected before and 
during the period treated of in the Mahabharata, and the 
Ramayana, was mainly accomplished in the palmy days of 
those kingly chieftains known as the Maharajas. These in 
the pre-Vedic period were their own priests, kindling their 
own altar-fires. As Thales, Solon, and Socrates were called 
Sophoi, — knowers, — the wise among the Aryans were 
denominated Rishis, and, in a much later period, Gymno- 
sophists. 



India's religions and social characteristics. 219 

It is conceded by Oriental scholars that 1200 B.C. the 
Aryans were not only a powerful people alono; the banks of 
the Indus, but around the mouths of the Ganges, on the 
extreme east of India. This was the latest period that can 
possibly be assigned to the Rig- Veda, oldest of the four 
Hindoo sacred books. And yet these Aryan seers whc 
composed the Veda speak, in their sacred works, of " older 
hymns which the fathers sang," of "ancient sages and 
elder gods." " They were old," says Samuel Johnson, " at the 
earliest epoch to which we can trace them. Their religion, 
like their language.! was already mature when the Rishis of 
the Veda were born." Marriages in this period were per- 
formed by the Maharajas, or by the father of the bride ; 
while the Rishis — seers or wise teachers — instructed the 
children, offered sacrifices, and spoke comforting words over 
the dead. 

Sacrifices have in them an underlying truth. On the 
higher planes of thought, they imply the consecration of the 
dearest possessions to the highest ideal. On the lower, 
superstitious stratum of life, the term " sacrifice " is made to 
mean the shedding of blood, and the remission of sins. 
The primitive Aryans offered three gifts as sacrifices, — 
fire, clarified butter, and the plant whose juices stimulate 
to a new life. The Jews offered goats and kids, heifers and 
rams. Certain superstitious Hindoos, in their degenerate 
present, engage in similar sacrifices. Enlightened men and 
women sacrifice strength, ease, comfort, to educate and 
bless humanity. 

Owing to wealth, luxury, and multiplying responsibilities 
of the earliest Maharajas, they employed the Rishis as sub- 
stitutes in religion, — employed them to attend to the sacri- 
ficial gifts, and serve as mediums of communication between 
them and their gods. How natural for Rishis, seers, proph- 
ets, to slide into the attitude of priests ! Thus employed, 
these seers, alias priests, soon assumed authority, and pro- 
fessed supernatural powers; and knowing something of 



220 AROUND THE WORLD. 

philosophy, magic, astrology, and seership, they perfected an 
organization which resulted in the priestly or Brahman caste, 
the features of which were defined in the laws of Manu. 
As the Brahman priests believed in Brahm, molded the 
rising thought, and officiated at religious ceremonies, the 
religion of Hindostan was naturally denominated Brah- 
manism. 

Aryanic in origin, 13.4 per cent of the world's religion- 
ists are Brahmans, and 31.2 per cent are Buddhists. These 
together make a decided majority over any religious sect on 
the globe. Buddhism bears something the same relation to 
Brahmanism that Christianity bears to Judaism. I class 
them together because Aryan in their origin and growth. 

BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT BRAHMANS. 

" There is," says Max Muller, " a remembrance of one 
God, breaking through the mists of idolatrous phraseology, — 
a monotheism which precedes the polytheism of the Veda." * 
Mr. Muller, who as authority is unrivaled, further says, 
" A Hindoo of Benares, in a lecture delivered before an 
English and native audience, defends his faith, and the faith 
of his forefathers, against such sweeping accusations " as 
polytheism and idolatry. 

" 'If by idolatry,' says this Hindoo scholar, 'is meant a system of 
worship which confines our ideas of the Deity to a mere image of clay 
or stone ; which prevents our hearts from being expanded and elevated 
with lofty notions of the attributes of God, — if this is what is meant by 
idolatry, we disclaim idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and deplore the ignor- 
ance or uncharitableness of those that charge us with this groveling 
system of worship. . . . We really lament the ignorance or uncharita- 
bleness of those who confound our representative worship with the 
Phoenician, Grecian, or Roman idolatry as represented by European 
writers, and then charge us with polytheism in the teeth of thousands 
of texts in the Puranas, declaring in clear and unmistakable terms that 
there is but on 3 God, who manifests himself as Brahma, Vishnu, and 
Rudra (Siva), in his functions of creation, preservation, and destruc- 
tion.' " f 

*Miiller's Sanscrit Literature, p. 559. 
t Miiller's G ?rman Workshop, p 17. 



India's religions and social characteristics. 221 

It is the common reply of the modern Hindoo to the mis- 
sionary, when accused of worshiping many gods, " Oh ! 
these are various manifestations of the one God ; the same 
as, though the sun be one in the heavens, yet he appears in 
multiform reflections upon the lake." That there are ignorant 
Hindoos who worship images, is doubtless true ; and equally 
true that there are Roman-Catholic Christians who worship 
pictures and the Virgin Mary, and Protestants who worship 
the Bible, instead of accepting its inspired truths. 

Defined in general terms, Brahmans believe in Brahm, 
the One self-existent, manifesting himself in the relation 
of creator, destroyer, preserver. Up to the present time, 
there have been, say these Hindoos, nine incarnations ; the 
ninth is that of Christna, son of the virgin Devanaguy. 
He was begotten by the thought of Vishnu ; and, at the 
moment of his birth, celestial music filled earth and heaven. 
Christna signifies, in Sanscrit, sacred. 

" The initiated Brahman," says Manu, " should take the 
vow of chastity, that he may present himself at the holy 
sacrifice with heart and body pure." The Catholic mission- 
ary Dubois says in his work entitled " 3Ioeurs des Indes" — 

" Justice, humanity, good faith, compassion, disinterested- 
ness, all the virtues, in fact, were familiar to them, and 
taught to others both by precept and example. Hence it 
comes that the Hindoos profess, at least speculatively, nearly 
the same moral principles as ourselves ; and, if they do not 
practice all the reciprocal duties of men towards each other 
in a civilized society, it is not because they do not know 
them." 

The sacred books of the Brahmans are rich in moral 
teachings ; to wit : — 

" Love of his fellow-creature should be the ruling princi- 
ple of the just man in all his works ; for such weigh most in 
the celestial balance." 

" As the body is strengthened by muscles, the soul is forti- 
fied by virtue." 



222 AROUND THE WORLD. 

" As the earth supports those who trample it under foot, 
and rend its bosom with the plow, so should we return 
good for evil." 

" The virtuous man is like the gigantic banyan-tree, 
whose beneficent shade affords freshness and life to the 
plants that surround it." 

Brahmans further believe the soul emanating from Brahm 
to be divine and immortal ; and, as it was given pure from 
all stain, it can not re-ascend to the celestial abode till it 
shall have been purified from all faults committed through 
its union with matter. They teach universal charity, — teach 
that self should be secondary, and that selfishness leads to 
hells and re-births ; while happiness and ultimate redemp- 
tion come through purity and entire self-renunciation. 
Benevolence and good deeds lead to homes among the gods. 
Some of the Vedic "hymns, are addressed to deified 
men who had attained their divinity through beneficent 
work." Other of these ancient hymns treat of charity and 
good works as means of salvation. Listen : — 

" He who keeps his food to himself has his sin to himself 
also." 

" He who gives alms goes to the highest heavens, — goes 
to the gods." 

" To be kind to the poor is to be greater than the greatest 
there." 

" Mortal life ended, go thou home to the fathers, and, if 
thou hast deserved it, dwell in a shining body with the 
gods." 

The religious hymns of the Kig-Veda date back to 1500 
B. C. — but were not put in writing until about 500 B. C. 
Thejr were retained in memory and transmitted to others 
before book-making. The Vedas abound in Spiritualism. 
The Devas were the " bright ones gone beyond." Departed 
ancestors were called Pitris. Converse with these Pitris led 
at a later period to ancestral worship. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE RISE OF BUDDHISM IX ZSTDIA. 

Buddha, of the family of the Sakyas and clan of the 
Guatamas, was not properly a Brahman by birth, but be- 
longed to the line of royalty. History pronounces him the 
son of a rajah of Kapilavastu, a kingdom probably in Nepal, 
near the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, north of Oudh. 
As a boy he was beautiful and brilliant, as a youth 
remarkable for his candor and contemplation. His wife was 
the accomplished Gopa. 

Riding as a prince in his father's city, in a chariot, observ- 
ing the poverty, misery, and death around him, and contem- 
plating upon the vanity of earthly things, he contrasted all 
this anxiety, this misery, with the calmness and true freedom 
of a religious devotee, a sort of an ascetic beggar, sitting at 
the city gate. The sight opened in his soul a new fountain ; 
and, though a proud prince, he threw aside his royal attire, 
crushed caste under his feet, and retired to a hermitage for 
six years. 

Brahmanical theology, with its sacrifices, ceremonial prac- 
tices, and Pharisaic conceits growing out of caste, early dis- 
gusted this religious enthusiast. The world was selfish and 
hollow. He renounced it, — renounced all pleasure, and, 
through humiliation and meditation, sought to conquer him- 
self. Subjecting the lower nature to the higher, engaging in 
fasting, prayer, and penances, he was blessed with ecstatic 
visions which pointed to true knowledge — the way of sal- 



224 AROUND THE WORLD. 

vation. Scon he became divinely illumined, and claimed the 
title of Buddha. 

His first public ministry, attended with spiritual marvels, 
was at Benares, where he made many converts. This 
accounts, in all probability, for the Buddhistic ruins at Sar- 
nath, near this sacred city of the Hindoos. 

Scholars generally agree in placing his death 543 B.C. 

BUDDHISTIC ETHICS. 

The gist of Buddha's teaching was this : all earthly 
objects, cognized by the senses, are unreal. All is change, 
all is vanity. There's nothing but sorrow in life. This sor- 
row is caused by ignorance, and the flow of the passions. 
Accordingly, the passions must be subdued, the affections 
toned down, the mind enlightened, and the life consecrated to 
good works : these moral and meritorious altitudes gained, and 
the soul is at the threshold of salvation, the gate of divine 
repose, conscious rest and peace in Nirvana. 

In addition to its prohibitory commandments, not to kill, 
nor steal, nor commit adultery, nor lie, nor be drunken ;. 
it enjoined such positive virtues as purity, charity, integrity, 
contemplation, forgiveness of injuries, equanimity of temper,, 
and self-abnegation. In brief, holiness of life released from 
further transmigrations, and secured eternal salvation, 
Nirvana ! Buddhism was never nihilism or atheism. 
Nirvana — derived from the negative nir, and va, to blow as 
the wind — implies calm unruffled, the peace and rest of a 
spent breeze, perfect felicity. Until this high position is 
attained, transmigrations are moral necessities. 

" Buddhism," says Dr. Wuttke, " stands in history as a 
religion not of one people, but of humanity. It conceived in 
the commencement the grand idea of peacefully converting 
the world." While maintaining the right of religious free- 
dom, its rejection of war and bloodshed has been absolute. 

Priests and others, both men and women, ministering in 
spiritual things, must live celibate lives. Buddha's doctrines- 






THE RISE OF BUDDHISM IN INDIA. 225 

spread rapidly. After his death, some 543 B.C., occurring 
while sitting under a sal-tree, the first general council of his 
followers was held to settle theological dogmas. At a third 
council, held in the reign of King Asoka, commencing 263 
B.C., when Buddhism had become the state religion of 
India, the canon, or holy Scriptures, — Tri-Pitaka, — of the 
Buddhists, were drawn up, and pronounced canonical. 

the eev. Murray's "civilized heathen." 

This distinguished Congregational clergyman, in a lyceum 
lecture delivered through New England upon the " Civilized 
Heathen," said in substance : — 

" Christian civilization might profit from Buddhism, and 
New England and Boston might go to school to China and 
Canton. The underlying idea of Buddhism is a belief in the 
infinite capacity of the human intellect ; belief in the avail- 
ing of true merit, and in the development of all the human 
faculties. It is not a heavy, sensual religion, but one purely 
rational, appealing to consciousness and intellect for support. 
While Old England and New England have used the rack, the 
cell, the dungeon, the inquisition, and thousand implements of 
torture, there were twenty-three hundred years of Buddhism 
with not a drop of blood in its onward march, nor a groan 
along its pathway. It has never persecuted. It has never de- 
ceived the people, never practiced pious fraud, never discour- 
aged literature, never appealed to prejudice, never used the 
sword. If the Buddhists are heathen, are they not civilized 
heathen f . . . Their priests depend upon voluntary subscrip- 
tions. We have homes for the sick, the poor, and the aged. 
But the heathen Buddhists go one step farther, and provide 
hospitals for sick and worn-out animals. They plant shade- 
trees along the way to shelter men and animals from the 
scorching sun. Grazing herds and all insect-life represent 
the divine thought. All life in their eyes is sacred. Chris- 
tians entertain travelers at hotels if they pay their bills. 
You are respectfully received by the wealthy if you bring 



226 AROUND THE WORLD. 

with, you letters of introduction from aristocratic circles ; but 
the door of the Buddhist is ever open to the stranger, with 
the mat and waiting pot of rice. The Burmese missionary 
Smith, said he ' could traverse the whole kingdom without 
money ; ' and during his missionary stay he saw no drunken- 
ness, not an indecent act, nor an immodest gesture. Com- 
pare this with the gross, filthy, night-walking prostitution of 
New York or London. Unselfishness, or forgetfulness of 
self, is a cardinal virtue. Struggles, sufferings, and sacrifices 
for others' good, purify and prepare the soul for heavenly 
rest." And these, these, are the heathen Buddhists, whom 
Orthodox theologians have for centuries preached to perdi- 
tion for not believing in Christianity, — this American Chris- 
tianity that speculates, loans money, persecutes heretics, rents 
pews, cheats, fights, and gambles at fairs and festivals, for 
religion's sake. I am not writing of the Christianity of 
Jesus, but the civilized Christianity of America, that sends 
missionaries to Asia's coral strand " to convert the Budd- 
hists." 

BUDDHA AND JESUS. 

The Buddhists consider Sakya Muni Guatama Buddha a 
much greater Saviour than Jesus Christ ; because the latter, 
born in poverty, a carpenter's son, sought, upon Jewish 
authority, to enthrone himself as king ; while Guatama 
Buddha, a king's son, laying aside royalty and a prospective 
crown, humbled himself, walking the companion of beggars, 
that he might the more effectually break down caste, reach- 
ing and enlightening the lowest classes of humanity. In 
preaching, Buddha continually magnified the " wheel of the 
law," the four great principles : — 

I. There is sorrow, want, pain. 

II. Examining the source of pain, b<? *ound it t« be selfish desire. 
HI. Pain was destroyed by regulating the natural demands of life, and 

destroying selfish desire by self-control. 

IV. The means of destroying it, in ihe sense of extirpation, were* 
meditation, self-abnegation, and the practice of every virtue. 




Guatania Buddha. 



THE RISE OF BUDDHISM IN INDIA. 227 

A Brahman accusing Guatama Buddha of idling away his 
time, neither sowing nor reaping, was met with this reply : 
"I do plow and sow, reaping thence fruit that is immortal." 
" Where are your implements, O Guatama ? " 
" My field is the law ; the weeds I clear away are the 
cleaving to life ; my plow is wisdom ; the seed I sow is 
purity ; my work, attention to the precepts ; my harvest, 
Nirvana! " 

TEACHINGS OF BUDDHA AND HIS DISCIPLES. 

" The taint worse than all others is ignorance." 

" In a corrupt world each ought to be a lotus without spot." 

'• So long as the desire of man towards woman is not subdued, so long 
is his mind in bondage." 

" Sin will come back upon the sinful, like fine dust thrown against 
the wind." 

" The way of release is through the practice of the virtues." 

" When the just man goes from this world to another, his good deeds 
receive him as friend greets friend." 

" Thyself is its own defense, its own refuge; it atones for its own sins ; 
none can purify another." 

" Master thyself ; so mayest thou teach others, and easily tame them, 
after having tamed thyself ; for self is hardest to tame." 

" Let us live happily, free from greed among the greedy, — happily, 
though we call nothing our own." 

"Proclaim it freely to all men, — my law is a law of mercy for all. 
. . . Whoever loves will feel the longing* to save not himself alone, but 
all others." 

" The talk of the ' high and low castes,' of the ' pure Brahmans, the 
only sons of Brahma,' is nothing but sound : the four castes are equal." 

" Are the Buddhas born only for the benefit of men ? Have not 
Wisakha- and many others, entered the paths ? The entrance is open 
for women as weii as for men." 

" Of all the lamps lighted in Buddha's honor, one only, brought by a 
poor woman, lasted through the night." 

" Forsake all evil, bring forth good, master thy own thought ; such is 
Buddha's path to end all pain." 

" And you yourself must make effort. The Buddhas are but 
preachers." 

" The good delights in this world and the next ; he delights in his 
own work, and is happy when going on the good path." 



228 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

" All we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks 
or acts with evil thoughts, pain follows, as the wheel the foot of him 
who draws the carriage." 

'" Better than ruling the world is the reward of the first step in 
virtue." 

" Not even a god, not Mara nor Brahma, could change into defeat the 
victory of a man over himself." 

The Dhammapada, otherwise "Path of Virtue," is put 
down as among the oldest records of the Buddhistic doc- 
trines. Most of the above precepts are taken from it, as 
stars from shimmering skies. The erudite, especially of the 
East, believe that they either refer directly to, or fell from 
the inspired lips of, Guatama Buddha himself. These and 
other sacred writings were carefully transmitted, as canon- 
ical, by the son of King Asoka, the Constantine of 
Buddhism. 

DECLINE OE BUDDHISM IN INDIA. 

Though Buddhism arose in India, it soon spread into 
Ceylon, Thibet, Burmah, Siam, China, Mongolia, and the 
extreme north of Asia. There are few or no Buddhists at 
present in India. The decline commenced in certain por- 
tions of India, about 200 B.C. The subsequent Jaina 
religion, denying the authority of the Vedas, was a modified 
Buddhism. While the Brahmins use no language in their 
sacred writings but the Sanscrit, the Ceylon Buddhistic 
Scriptures are in Pali, a rich, poetical language, attaining 
its highest refinement near the advent of Buddha, something 
like 588 B.C. This Pali, of which Max Miiller so frequently 
speaks, is little more than the Brahminical Sanscrit melted 
down to the softness of the Italian. 

It was in the palmy days of the Buddhistic period that 
the Greeks under Alexander invaded India, 327 B.C.; shortly 
after which, Grecian orators visited, and Greek ambassadors 
resided at, the court of a distinguished Indian king. Sub- 
sequent to these invasions, Greek historians, while giving 



THE RISE OF BUDDHISM IN INDIA. 229 

very interesting descriptions of the Brahmanical caste system, 
the wealth of the country, the republican tendencies of 
government, and the great learning of the Indian scholars, 
expressed the most surprise at the self-abnegation f.nd 
asceticism practiced by the hermits of India. They further 
speak of schools of prophets, or communities where men 
lived abstemiously and peaceably, holding " all things in 
common." 

The Greek and Persian invasions into India, several 
hundred years before Jesus' advent, opening up an inter- 
change of learning and letters, put into our hands keys to 
be used in the elucidation of religious questions, growing 
out of the Alexandrian School in Egypt, where the Indian 
philosophy, Hellenism, and Judaism grasped in deadly con- 
flict, affecting and coloring the future Christianity of the 
ages. 

THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS. 

Religion as a soul emotion is universal ; but the expression 
as a sentiment, owing to organization and racial tendency, 
manifests itself in several great sects. The most primitive 
worship of all is Fetichism, or Sabaism, so-called. 

This is prof essed by 100,000,000. 

The religion of Zoroaster and Confucius .... 40,000,000. 

Brahmanism, the original faith of India .... 60,000,000. 

Buddhism, the reformed faith 270,000,000. 

Mohammedanism 96,000,000. 

Judaism 4,500,000. 

The Greek Church 62,000,000. 

The Roman Church 139,000,000. 

The sects of Protestantism 115,000,000. 

These numbers profess to be approximations only. The 
Tauists of China, numbering millions, are not mentioned. 
The Buddhists, here estimated at one hundred and seventy 
millions, far outnumber any other sect of religionists upon 
the globe. This admits of no doubt. 



230 AROUND THE WORLD. 

THE ELEPHANT A CAVES. 

Shri Q-unesJia-aya-Namaha ! — To glorious Gunesha, saluta- 
tion ! Gunesha, the elephant-god of India, is connected 
with literature as well as worship. When first reading that 
misleading work, Godfrey Higgins's Anacalypsis, I was 
peculiarly struck with his reference to the " Elephanta 
Caves of India." They are situated upon the island of 
Garipurix, only a few hours' sail from Bombay. 

Landing, a long, winding stone stairway leads to this 
mountain of sculptured marvels. A stroll through these 
churchal-looking caverns, old Buddhistic temples, cut into a 
yielding, yet solid mountain rock, was a sight truly impress- 
ive, a day long to be remembered. The ceiling to the first 
we entered was about twenty feet high, the depth back to 
the rock-carved gods, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu at the 
rear, something like one hundred and fifty feet by perhaps 
one hundred and twenty in width. The divisions, compart- 
ments, pillars, aisles, alcoves, and niches, filled with exquis- 
itely-cut gods, and panoramic festival scenes, grim as grand, 
kindling the wonder of travelers, all literally charmed me : 
it was tradition in earnest, a feast to my love of antiquity. 
In one compartment is symbolized the Trinity, — Brahma, 
Siva, Vishnu, — the Christian " Three in One." In another 
division is Christna, with emblems referring to his incarna- 
tion. Behind the left thigh of this god is carved — what ? 
the cross, or a heavy -hilted sword, which? No matter 
whether cross or sword, it can not fail to remind one of 
Abraham's position when taking an oath. 

Every thing connected with these caverns inspires one with 
the grand and the reverential. Scores of lifelike figures, 
from twelve inches to fifteen feet in height, elegantly carved 
in and forming a part of the original rock, with corridors and 
tapering columns, all exhibit a high order of architectural 
talent, considering that it antedated the Christian era by 
several hundred years. These Buddhistic monasteries, though 



THE RISE OF BUDDHISM IN INDIA. 231 

conceived and constructed long before the birth of Jesus, 
and still the resort of Hindoo pilgrims, are admirably adapted 
to religious meditation and anchoretic life. Many years 
since, the Portuguese anchoring on an adjoining island, 
shelled these caves for sport. " May God have mercy on 
their souls, and all other such Christian vandals ! " Dr. Bhau 
Daji, a Hindoo scholar, and vice-president of the Asiatic 
Society of Bombay, takes a deep interest in exploring and 
explaining the histories of cave-cathedrals in India, to all 
lovers of antiquarian studies. 

There's not a vestige of proof in these caves, — rock 
temples of worship, that Christianity and Christian symbols 
were borrowed from Buddhism. There's not a carving in 
these weird caves that can be tortured into a resemblance to 
"the Holy Family" or the "Crucifixion of Krishna." I 
examined them with an erudite Bombay gentlemen carefully ; 
and the testimonies of men, who will sit in their comfortable 
homes, as did Higgins, Taylor and others, and write " hear- 
say " about cave symbols and the pillar-inscriptions of India, 
to make out a case against the Palestinian origin of Chris- 
tianity — are worse than worthless. Study and genuine 
Oriental research doom all such men and their books to 
eternal forge tfulness. No scholar presumes to quote them 
as authority. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE BBAHMO-SOMAJ AND PARSEES. — SPIBITTJALISM IN 

INDIA. 

" The Friend oe India," published at Serampore, had 
among its selections, just before our arrival, this telling para- 
graph : — 

" The Bombay papers contain accounts of a mania for spirit-rapping, 
which they say has set in among the natives there. If the statements 
are correct, -it would not be surprising if the mania ran through India. 
Every thing connected with the spirit-world is a profound mystery to the 
native of India. He has no definite ideas as to the future. He con- 
fesses at once that it may be this or that, — he knows not what. A city 
with golden pavement astonishes him, but really the definiteness is what 
puzzles him. If spirit-rapping finds its way among such a people, we 
shall have queer revelations by and by. They will intensify a hundred- 
fold all the mysteries, and. will make a thousand more. Keligion will 
not stand in the way in the slightest degree. A Hindoo is free to 
examine any thing on the face of the earth, and speculate to his heart's 
content." 

A rare tissue this of the true and the false ! Hindoos, 
thank Heaven! are "free to examine any thing on the face 
of the earth." And this confession, all unwittingly made, 
should put to shame the churchman's bigotry. " Every 
thing connected with the spirit-world," however, is not a 
"profound mystery to the native of India." Converse with 
spirits is as old as the Vedas, while Indian Oriental writings 
generally are freighted with the teachings of inspired seers 
and 3ainted Rishis. 



THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ AND PARSEES. 233 

Opening Capt. Forsyth's volume on " Central [ndia," 
I find important passages on p. 362 and others. Here is 
the substance : — 

"Theirs — the Bygds — it is to hold converse with the world of 
Bpirits, who are everywhere present to the aborigines ; and theirs it is 
also to cast omens, call for rain, and charm away disease. The Byga — 
medicine-man — fully looks his character. He is tall, thin, and cadaver- 
ous, abstraction and mystery residing in his hollow eyes. A great neck- 
lace, carved from forest-kernels, marks his holy calling. Ghosts are 
supposed to be ever present, inciting to either good or evil. Many pro- 
fess to see them. . . . These Byga medicine-men further possess the 
gift of throwing themselves into a trance, during which the afflatus of 
the Deity is supposed to be vouchsafed to them, communicating the 
secrets of the future. I am thoroughly convinced [says the captain], by 
evidence from other quarters, that this trance is not mere acting." 

Mr. Tscherepanoff, a Russian scientific man, published 
in 1854 at St. Petersburg the result of his investigations 
with the lamas — Buddh.st priests — in Thibet. He says, 
" The lamas, when applied to for the discovery of stolen or 
hidden things, take a little table, put one hand on it, and 
after nearly half an hour the table is lifted up by an invisi- 
ble power, and is carried to the place where the thing in 
question is to be found, whether in or out of doors, where it 
drops, generally indicating exactly the spot where the miss- 
ing article is to be found." 

The missionary M. Hue says, — 

"When a living Buddha is 'gone,' i. e., deceased, it is not a subject 
of mourning in the lamasery, for all know he will soon come back." 

THE ORIENTAL SPIRITUALISTS. 

Readers of the " Banner of Light " remember to have 
heard me speak of receiving India letters from Peary Chand 
Mittra, a commission-merchant, writer, and Spiritualist. It 
can well be imagined that it gave me much pleasure to clasp 
the hand of this Hindoo thinker, author, and Spiritualist ; and 
the more so when I found his soul deeply absorbed in spirit- 
aality as against the vices of this sensuous life. The Brah- 



234 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

manical tinge permeating his Spiritualism had for me a 
thousand charms. He was for a time a writing medium ; but 
at present his gifts pertain more to spiritual insight. He 
assured me that his ascended wife was as consciously present, 
at times, as though in her body. Parting with this excel- 
lent man, he gave us, besides other presents, a small volume 
from his pen entitled " The Development of the Female 
Mind in India." Perusing, I find it rich in historic refer- 
ences to woman's independence in the Vedic period, — the 
golden age of the Aryans. 

Mohindro Saul Paul and Romanath Senx — two interest- 
ing young gentlemen connected with the higher castes — 
called upon us several times to converse of Spiritual phe- 
nomena in America, and the best methods of holding private 
stances. Conversant with the Spiritualistic literature of 
England through the mails, these young men are Spirit- 
ualists ; and yet they have never witnessed a shred of the 
phenomenal. A correspondence was agreed upon with these 
gentlemanly Hindoos. Are we not brothers all f 

Shibchunder Deb — another devoted Spiritualist, intro- 
duced by P. C. Mittra — presented us a neat volume that he 
had recently published upon Spiritualism. It contains lib- 
eral extracts from American authors ; in fact, the works of 
Davis, Tuttle, Sargent, Denton, Edmonds, and others are 
well known in India. This gentleman had also translated 
a large portion of my book " Seers of the Ages " into the 
Bengalese language ; and they are now being circulated as 
tracts in India. We saw several Hindoo healers relieving 
the sick in the streets. 

Expressing regrets that I had not a copy of the " Seers ' ; 
to tender him in turn for his valuable volume, smiling, he 
said, " I have read ' The Seers of the Ages,' and others of 
your later works, quite a number of which have reached our 
country from Mr. Burns's publishing house in London." So 
courage, brave fellow-workers all, courage ! Your pens 
preach where your eloquent tongues are never heard. 



THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ AND PARSEES. 235 

India's better class of minds — metaphysical and contem- 
plative — are singularly adapted to accept the harmonial 
philosophy. It is a common saying that " Hindoos, edu- 
cated in English colleges, return to India theists and pap- 
theists." Though -filling enough to believe in Jesus as one 
of the Asiatic saviors and prophets, they can not believe in 
the immaculate conception and vicarious atonement. Oh 
that there we>e self-sacrifice, sufficient liberality, generous 
enthusiasm, ?-,nd missionary spirit, among Americans, to send 
Spiritualist papers, pamphlets, books, and lecturers even, to 
India, to disseminate the beautiful principles of brotherhood, 
free thought, and a present spirit ministry ! The seed has 
already been sown by the angels ; there are many Spiritual- 
ists in different parts of this great country: can they, ivill 
they not perfect organizations, and thus come into working 
oHer? 

7 IE ABORIGINES OF INDIA. — A SAGE-LIKE SPIRIT'S COM- 
MUNICATION. 

As the present is born of the past, I am ever anxious, so 
e ar as possible, to get at the foundations of the old civiliza- 
tions and religions ; and for the reason that many of them 
were so far in advance of ours in this boastful nineteenth 
century. Comparative philology, coins, and inscriptions 
upon monuments, with the testimony of ancient spirits, — 
these must decide upon the status of the pre-historic periods. 
Sitting one evening by the side of Dr. Dunn aboard the 
steamer " Aretusa " in the Arabian Sea, reflecting how the 
rude, stalwart Northmen descended upon cultured Rome in 
the long ago, and pondering upon the thought that physical 
'might makes right," the doctor all unexpectedly became 
entranced. The controlling spirit, bowing low after the 
Oriental manner, said, — 

" Good evening, stranger. I see you are wrapped in meditation ; pei" 
haps my coming is an intrusion." 

Not in the least, sir; am glad to welcome you. 



236 AROUND THE WORLD. 

"The origin and destiny of races is a subject of vast import. I lived 
in Hindusta, the land of plenty, — now called India, — about four thou- 
sand years ago. We spoke the Sansar, the language of the sun, — vul- 
garized into Sanscrit. It was the language of sounds, and compassed 
the uttered emotions of man, beast, insect. The most learned savants of 
my time professed to understand the out-breathed and meaning sounds 
— pleasure, pain, desires — of all animated life. Generally poets under- 
stood one part, Rishis another, metaphysicians still another; but none 
knew it all, for it was the study of more than a single life. Our govern- 
ment, embracing a portion of Africa, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and India, 
was patriarchal ; the emperor being considered a father, under whom were 
kings over smaller divisions, lords of cities, and head men of villages. 
This extensive government, having no coin currency, and transacting 
business, even of a commercial character, upon the principle of equiv- 
alents, was largely sustained by voluntary contributions. A moderate- 
competency was regarded a sufficiency with my countrymen.. 

"Indeed, it was a maxim among us that man wants only what he lives- 
upon ; and accordingly at the end of the year each city, village, and 
family paid over to the government all its surplus produce and 
treasures of every kind. And then, in times of scarcity or famine, the 
government, upon the principle of compensation, supported the people 
from its public granaries and accumulated stores. Disputes were settled 
by arbitration. Capital punishment was unknown among us. 

" The Aryans, or rather the Aryas, who came down from the north, 
were among the first of the blood-spilling nations. They were the lower, 
athletic classes, the rovingly disposed, in Central and Northern Asia, 
speaking a mongrel Sanscrit. Their descent into India was long after 
my time. Our system of marriage was monogamic ; after this came 
polyandry, the marriage of one woman to many men, of which your his- 
tories speak ; still later came polygamy, which, as you are aware, con- 
tinues in many countries. We worshiped one God, incarnate in all 
things. The pyramids, of which in due time you shall know more, 
were built before my time on earth." 

Pardon me, but had you commerce in that age ? 

" Yea : we not only carried on shipping with Africa and other foreign 
countries, but had extensive canals through India, Egypt, and other por- 
tions of Africa. Some of these countries have been greatly changed by 
convulsions since I left the body. We counted time by sun-changes, 
and long periods by the reigns of emperors. Literature was patronized 
among us, and beggary unknown. I lived through about eighty sun- 
changer, or years according to your reckoning. We understood spirit- 
sommunion, and many of us held mediumistic converse with spirits. I 
was cognizant, long after my ascension to the heavenly life, of the spirit- 



THE BBAHMO-SOMAJ AND PARSBES. 237 

world's raising up, some two thousand years since, through inspirational 
and magnetic processes, an Israelitish Nazarene, a prophet, to spiritually 
enlighten his people, and afterwards the nations of the earth. He was 
guarded by angels, and guided by the spirit of truth. There have been 
many ages of iron and ages of gold. Nations are ever rising and de- 
scending as do waves upon fathomless oceans." 

There, reader, is the communication — the sentiments, at 
least — with much of the language verbatim. Take it as I 
did, with all other spirit communications, for what it is 
worth, weighed by reason, and sound, practical judgment. 

"Is there any historic evidence," says one, "of non- 
Aryan races with culture and literature, inhabiting India 
long before the Aryans came down from the north?" Cer- 
tainly there is. We have room for only this from Prof. E. 
Lethbridge, M.A., Oxford, and now professor in a Calcutta 
College. He says (" History of India," pp. 17, 18) : — 

" Remnants of a large population, non- Aryan in origin, yet hardly, if 
at all, less civilized and polished than the Aryans, are found among the 
hills and river-basins south of the mountain-ranges. Their personal 
appearance testifies that they are not connected, by descent, with the 
Aryans ; -while their language proves decisively that they belong to an 
entire different race. It has been called Dravidian, — the language 
Telugu; others term it Tamil. . . . The architectural and other remains 
that are scattered over the country, and the state of the language, confirm 
the traditions that the Tamilian race attained a high state of civilization 
in very remote ages, probably long before the Aryan invasion of India." 

ALLAHABAD. 

" India of the J&asi;, o'er whose valleys sweet 
Too quickly pass my ever-wandering feet, 
Ere yet your shores in lengthening distance fade, 
Let faithful Memory lend my pen her aid." 

Unfortunately, it was long after nightfall when we crossed 
the magnificent bridge spanning the Jumna, to enter Allaha* 
bad, " the City of God," anciently called by the Hindoos 
Prayaga. Here, at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna, 
is the great fortress, built on the ruins of an old Hindoo 



238 AROTJND THE "WORLD. 

fort by Akbiir, a Mogul emperor, reigning about three 
hundred years ago. Travelers consider this — because of 
wide, well-shaded streets, beautiful avenues, mausoleums, 
and marble domes, commemorating Mohammedan glory — 
the handsomest city in India. 

Historically speaking, it should be remembered that there 
were five Mohammedan invasions into India, the first 
being one of disgraceful plunder and downright murder. 
Mussulman power was not established to any great extent 
till nearly the twelfth century. Sultan Mahmoud, of Ghazin, 
fought seventeen distinct campaigns in India, carrying away 
immense treasures to enrich his country. His zeal in de- 
stroying idols gave him the name of "Iconoclast," — the 
image-breaker. There is a deep, silent hatred existing 
between the Hindoos and Mohammedans, and yet they 
peaceably worship side by side. 

Allahabad is a wonderful resort for pilgrims. It is said 
that a million are sometimes encamped about the city. 
Some of the Brahmanical priests are evidently very saintly 
men; others, doubtless, encourage these pilgrimages and 
festivals from avaricious motives. Priestcraft is the same in 
all countries. It is two hundred and fifty miles from Alla- 
habad to Agra, world-famed for the Taj, — a tomb of exqui- 
site and unparalleled magnificence. The structure, peerless 
and unrivaled, was built at a cost of fifteen million dollars, 
to immortalize the memory of a woman, — Noor Mahal, — the 
favorite wife of Emperor Shah Jehan. This Mogul ruler 
was the grandson of Akbar, who was sufficiently enlight- 
ened to patronize literature, and tolerate all religions. No- 
where on earth has human dust been buried in style and 
grandeur so sublime. Here at the Taj lie the forms of 
emperor and empress beneath a splendid dome, " each in a 
coach of almost transparent marble," set with precious 
stones, topaz, ruby, jasper, carnelian, chalcedony, all beauti- 
fully inwrought in running vines and blossoming flowers. 
It is said that the whole of the Kc ran in Arabic is most 



THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ AND PARSEES. 239 

skillfully wrought in gemmed mosaics into this templed 
tomb ; and all for what ? To perpetuate in memory the 
pitiable pride and vanity of mortals even in death ! Were 
there no ignorant to be educated, no hungry to be fed, and 
no thirsty to give a cup of water, in Shah Jehan's time ? 
Looked down upon from the spirit-land, this tomb can only 
be a sting ! 

THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ WORSHIPERS. 

As progress in all countries necessarily interests Americans, 
they must like to know more of the Brahmo-Somaj, — 
" Society of God," and real theistic church of India, — 
originally founded by Rajah Rahmohun Roy, a distinguished 
Hindoo reformer of the Brahman caste. Being a fine scholar, 
versed in the Sanscrit, he became convinced that the earliest 
Vedas taught a system of pure theism. Thus believing, he 
wrote against the " idolatry of all religions," encouraged 
education, advocated free thought, and opposed suttee, — 
voluntary widow-burning, then a common practice in India. 
Universally esteemed, Rahmohun Roy died while on a visit 
to England in 1833. 

These first Hindoo reformers, though exceedingly liberal 
in most matters, firmly believed the Vedas to be the infalli- 
ble word of God. Ere long, however, some doubting the 
infallibility of the Vedic scriptures, four young yet scholarly 
pundits were sent to Benares to study and copy from the 
four Vedas. This research dispelled the gathering fog of 
.nfallibility ; and the Brahmo-Somaj, numbering many of the 
choicest intellects in India, ceased to be a Vedantic church. 
From this time the sacred books of all nations were taken 
for what they were worth, and no more. 

No band of reformers, whether in India or America, can 
expect to ever sail on sunny seas. Storms, petty dissen- 
sions, will arise ; some within, others without. Social per- 
secution from orthodox Hindoos lifted its hydra head ; and a 
partial eclipse came on, followed by indifference to the 
interests of theism. 17 



240 AROUND THE WORLD. 

At this critical hour there came upon the stage a caste 
Hindoo, and graduate from the Presidency College, Baboo 
Keshub Chunder Sen. This religiously inclined scholar, 
reading and admiring English literature, and the works of 
Theodore Parker, soon shook off every vestige of idolatrous 
superstition, becoming a stanch theist. Connecting him- 
self with the Brahmo-Somaj, he quite unconsciously found 
himself in a short time a leader in their ranks. Expressed 
in a sentence, these Brahmo-Somaj worshipers are simply 
radical Unitarians, practicing the same order of Sunday 
worship, only engaging in more singing. Among their inno- 
vations are the equality of women, the ignoring of caste, the 
rejection of the " sacred thread," and the performance of 
the marriage ceremon}^ without absurd Hindoo rites. 

When proud Brahmanical Hindoos found that these icono- 
clastic Brahmos not only denied the infallibility of the 
Vedas, but did not respect the custom of child-marriage, nor 
cherish faith in Hindoo theology generally, they reproached 
them as heretics. On the other hand, "when Christians 
find," says Keshub Chunder Sen, " that Brahmos call in 
question the authority of the Bible, dispute the divinity of 
Jesus, and freely criticise Christian doctrines held in rever- 
ence by the best and wisest of Europe, an utter contempt is 
felt for the poor, misguided, presumptuous theists of India, 
whom the Rev. Dr. Duff styled as ' striplings on the banks 
of the River Ganges.' " 

Here are sketches from their articles of belief : — 

" God is spirit, not matter. He is perfect, infinite, and eternal. He 
is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, all-merciful, all-blissful, and 
holy. He is our Father. 

" The soul is immortal. Death is only the dissolution of the body : 
the soul lives everlastingly in God. There is no new birth after death : 
the life hereafter is only the continuation and development of the present 
life. Each soul departs from this world with its virtues and sins, and 
gradually advances in the path of eternal progress while realizing their 
effects. 

" Brahmoism is distinct from all other systems of religion ; yet it ia 



THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ AND PARSEES. 241 

the essence of all. It is based on the constitution of man, and is there- 
fore ancient, eternal, and universal. It is not sectarian, not confined to 
age or country. 

" All mankind are of one caste, and all are equally entitled to embrace 
the Brahmo religion. Every sinner must suffer the consequences of 
his own sins sooner or later, in this world or in the next ; for the moral 
law is unchangeable, and God's justice irreversible. 

" It is the aim of the Brahmo religion to extinguish caste hatred and 
animosity, and bind all mankind into one fraternity, — one brotherhood 
of souls." 

The Brahmos, having quite a number of organizations in 
India, publish a theistic annual, print six or seven journals, 
and send out missionaries into different parts of the country. 
They also have branch associations in England, Belgium, 
Holland, Italy, Spain, and the United States ; the president 
of the latter being Rev. O. B. Frothingham, and the secre- 
tary, Rev. W. B. Potter. The attitude of these Indian 
Liberalises is exceedingly friendly and cordial toward Spirit- 
ualism. Frothingham and Potter are both now dead. 

This religious movement, originating as it did among the 
Brahmans of India, is one fraught with vital importance. 
And while tendering to the Brahmos of the East and all 
parts of the world the hand of hearty fellowship ; hoping for 
their growth in peace, purity, and that charity which crowns 
the Christian graces, — I sincerely pray that they may " add 
to their faith" knowledge, knowledge of a conscious immor- 
tality through the present ministry of spirits ; thus prepar- 
ing them to "go on unto perfection," holding " all things in 
common," and living daily the "resurrection life." 

Already more than a year has passed since leaving my native 
home. Time flies. August days are upon me ; and I must 
take my departure from this ancient mother-country of 
civilizations and religions. Egypt and Palestine are before 
me. But, dear old India ! land of my early dreams, recepta- 
cle of Oriental learning, and the most interesting of all the 
countries my eyes have yet seen, I leave you reluctantly, 
sorrOwingly. Peace, peace, be unto you, — peace from God 
and his good angels ! 



242 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

THE PARSEES. 

Youth is the dreamland of life. Reading, when an aca- 
demic student, of the famous Persian King Darius, con- 
temporary of Buddha, leading an invading army into 
India, and also of Zoroaster the great Persian religionist, 
implanted in my soul a deep desire to know something practi- 
cally of Persian character and religion. Next to Central 
Persia itself, India, containing over a hundred thousand " fire- 
worshipers," was just the place, inasmuch as they tenaciously 
retain most of the customs of their ancestors. Exceedingly 
clannish, dressing in Oriental, robe-shaped apparel, generally 
white, the Parsees do not intermarry with other nations, nor 
do they like to eat food prepared by other people. They 
consider themselves the chosen of God, and the subjects of 
special angel ministry. Fair-complexioned, their general 
appearance is graceful and commanding. They are the Jews 
of Bombay^ the bankers, the money-lenders, the traders. 
On Malabar Hill they have great wealth and elegant villas. 
Pious Parsees pray sixteen times each day, maintain their 
own schools, and take care of their own poor. 

ZOROASTER, FOUNDER OF THE PARSEE FAITH. 

It is difficult to determine with exactness the precise 
period of the world's saviors. That eminent Oriental 
scholar, M. Haug, puts Zoroaster — Zarathustra Spitama — 
2300 B.C., thus antedating Moses. But far better author- 
ities than Haug or Renan are the earliest Greek writers. It 
is a momentous consideration, that all the Greek authors who 
wrote upon the Magi and the Parsee religion, previous to the 
Christian era, put Zoroaster back to a period of full six 
thousand years B.C. 

Xanthos of Lydia, one of the first writers upon the sub- 
ject, living about 450 B.C., was a younger contemporary of 
Darius and Xerxes. His reckoning makes Zoroaster to have 
been living at a period nearly 6500 B.C. 



THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ AND PAESEES. 243 

Aristotle, the philosopher and teacher of Alexander the 
Great, states that Zoroaster lived about six thousand years 
before the death of Plato (348 B.C.), which would carry us 
to about 6350 B.C. Eudoxus, Harroodorus, and other Gre- 
cian writers, made similar calculations. 

Hermippus of Smyrna, one of the most ancient authorities 
among the Greeks upon the religion of the Magi, lived about 
250 B.C., making the Zoroastrian books the study of his 
life. This Hermippus, according to Pliny, was informed by 
his teacher, Agonakes, a Magian priest, that Zoroaster lived 
about five thousand years before the Trojan war, occurring 
1180 B.C. This would take Zoroaster back to 6180 B.C. 

That there was a Zoroaster in the time of Hystaspes, 
Darius' father, is not disputed. Zoroaster was a common 
name in Persia, as was Jesus in Syrian countries. But 
Zoroaster of the Avesta, the prophet and founder of the 
Parsee religion, flourished more than eight thousand years 
since. 

RELIGIOUS DOCTRINES OF THE PARSEES. 

Conversing with Ichangir Burjorji Vacha, a Parsee Orien- 
tal scholar of Bombay, and perusing the books he so kindly 
presented, the following is submitted as a general statement 
*,f their religious opinions : — 

They believe in one God, eternal, invisible, — Ahura-Maz- 
da, unity in duality. Ormuzd, the " highest of spirits," 
was a tutelary divinity, as was the Jehovah of the Old Tes- 
tament. This God, Ahura-Mazda, infinitely wise and good, 
punishes the sinful, and rewards the virtuous for their good 
deeds. Their theology knows nothing of any sin-atoning 
Saviour. Their fire-temples have no pulpits. Their priests 
are teachers, abounding in prayers. 

Zoroaster was the exalted prophet, the chief of the wise, 
who wrought miracles, who taught men to pray with their 
faces towards the light, who enjoined upon men to practice 
good deeds, and look for a reckoning on the fourth morning 
after death. 



244 AROUND THE WORLD. 

There are both good and evil spirits. The wise ask the 
protection of their guardian angels. The truly pious guard 
the sacred fire, bathe often, avoid pollution, encourage knowl- 
edge, and perform acts of beneficence. The Kusti and the 
Sudra form the badge of the Parsee worshipers. The Sudra 
is a plain, robe-like vest reaching to the knees ; the Kusti 
a hollow woolen cord, woven by women of the priest-caste 
only, and consisting of seventy-two threads in the warp. 
The Kusti, blessed of the priests, is tied over the Sudra, and 
wound three times around the waist. The Nirang, or the 
use of Nirang during the first morning prayer, is not enjoined 
in the Avesta ; nor is it practiced by the progressive Parsees 
of Bombay or Persia. Previous to prayers, they wash the 
face and hands. Each month of the year is named after an 
angel. All prayers are recited in the Zend language. The 
Parsees are not polygamists, but strictly monogamists. 

PARSEE CEMETERIES, AND THE VULTURES THAT DEVOUR 
THEIR DEAD. 

The Persian method of disposing of their dead must, to 
an American believing in the evangelical doctrine of the 
resurrection of the body, be absolutely revolting. The Par- 
see cemetery in Bombay, Dokma, situated several miles from 
the center of the city, is designated by some writers " the 
Tower of Silence." The area devoted to this purpose is 
located on the north-east crest of Malabar Hill, and sur- 
rounded by thick walls some thirty feet high, within which 
are walks, flowers, seats for meditation, and tall, round stone 
towers, capped with descending, concave-shapen gratings. 
Upon these the bodies of their dead are placed, and left to 
return to the elements, or be devoured by the scavenger- 
birds of the East: Flocks of these filthy, flesh-eating birds 
are said to be ever in waiting for a corpse. All avenues to 
these " Towers of Silence " are carefully guarded. Parsees 
themselves, even the mourners, are not permitted to enter 
the gateways leading to these cemeteries : only priests and a 



THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ AND PAKSEES. 245 

certain caste, "bearers of the dead," officiate within the 
walls. When suns and rains have changed, and ugly vul- 
tures torn and devoured, the flesh of these exposed bodies, 
the bones slide down into deep sepulchral vaults. 

Owing to diet and bathing, the Parsees are long-lived. 
They eat neither pork, beef, nor meat of any kind. Holi- 
days are employed in prayers and feasts. When a Parsee dies, 
prayers are offered at the house. The soul goes to heaven, and 
the body must not be tainted with corruption. Therefore it 
is at once washed, purified, dressed in white, and borne by 
the dead-bearers to the Towers of Silence. There are six 
of these within the walled inclosure, which overlook bun- 
galows, public buildings, forests of palm-trees, Elephanta, 
and other mountain-islands studding the deep waters. 

THEIR TEMPLES, ALTAR, AND FIRE. 

There is little in style or architecture to outwardly distin- 
guish a Parsee temple from a Jewish synagogue. Their edi- 
fices in all countries are considered consecrated to worship, to 
prayer, and the " sacred fire" originally from heaven through 
their prophet Zoroaster. They do not worship this fire, but 
consider it, as they do the sun, a symbol of the infinite 
Light, that " eternal fire " which must ultimately burn up 
the dross of the universe. Though the mosaic floors of 
Parsee temples are never paced by unholy feet, nor their per- 
petual fires seen by infidel eyes, the following description, 
paradoxical as it may seem, is dictated by one who has 
explored their temples, and gazed upon their sacred fire, ever 
burning in the innermost sanctuary : — 

Within their temples are three courts, Parsees themselves 
entering only the outer. The high priest with veiled face, 
that his breath even may not pollute, approaches alone to 
see and feed the fire with sandal, precious woods, and fra- 
grant spices. Those in the second, or intermediate court 
behold a dimmed reflection ; while those in the inner court 
only catch a glimpse of the light from the altar, and freely 



246 AROUND THE WORLD. 

breathe the incense-fumes of the spice-woods. Their altars 
are of stone, and parallelogram-shaped ; some rough-hewn, 
and others choicely polished, shining like alabaster. On the 
top of the altar is an excavation, or hollowing-out for the 
fire. On one side of the altar is an exquisitely carved 
figure of the sun ; on the opposite side, creation, or chaos 
unfolding into Kosmos ; on one end is a high tower, with a 
human form chiseled thereon, catching the first rays of the 
rising sun, signifying the entrance of the spirit into the light 
of immortality ; and on the other side is a shadowy reflection 
of the sun fading away into total darkness, prefiguring 
Hades, the under-world of darkness and destruction. As no 
good Mohammedan drinks wine, nor Jew eats swine's flesh, 
so no Parsee smokes tobacco. Such a use of fire, applied to 
a weed, would be both a disgrace and a desecration. 

Fortunately I met at Madjura, India, Dr. K. R. Divecha, 
a very learned Parsee physician. From both him and his 
good wife I received many kindnesses. All Zoroastrians are 
Monotheists. They wear a sacred girdle, the Kusti, on the 
shirt next to the skin. They pray while tying and untying 
this girdle. They regard the cow and cow's urine as power- 
ful means in removing disease. Intercourse with a pregnant 
woman is considered a crime. Every one touching a corpse 
becomes defiled. Women during menstruation must isolate 
themselves from the family. They consider a corpse too 
filthy to be touched and too poisonous to be buried in the 
soil. The dog is a sort of sacred animal and precedes the 
corpse on the march to the Tower of Silence. After a 
funeral all are expected to use cow's urine to purify them- 
selves. They pray for the dead. They look upon the 
" Fravashis of the Holy" as guardian spirits. Every 
family has its consecrated room. The Indian Parsees are 
a very neat, thrifty and religious people. They are most 
numerous in Bombay. 



CHAPTER XX. 

FEOM INDIA TO ARABIA. — ADEN AND THE ARABS. 

/he usual sailing distance from Bombay across the Indian 
CXsean to Aden, a seacoast city of Arabia, is some seventeen 
hundred miles ; but our Austrian captain commanding the 
steamer " Aretusa," considering the fierceness of the mon- 
soons at this season, decided upon the southern course, 
making the route full twenty-five hundred miles, and sub- 
jecting us to an eighteen-days' drag upon the deep ! 

Yhis Aden in " Araby the Blest " is called the " Gibraltar 
of the East," because so thoroughly fortified, and conse- 
quently prepared to manage any military movements on the 
Red Sea. Though once held by the Portuguese, afterwards 
by tne Turks, and now by the English, it has ever been a 
city of sand, nestling at the feet of volcanic peaks, and 
destitute of vegetation, even to a blade of grass. 

Dreary and desert-looking, Aden claims a population of 
twenty thousand; the cantonment portion of which, being 
five miles from the landing, is cozily located in the crescent- 
shaped crater of an old, extinct volcano. It is a great mart 
for ostrich-feathers. Rumor declares that it rains here but 
once in three years. 

Owiag to the protracted droughts, those holding this 
barren place in the sixth century excavated immense reser- 
voirs in the rocks at the foot of the mountains, for the tardy 
yet heavy rains to fill. Still in preservation, and called the 
" ten tanks," they are largely utilized to supply the present 



248 AROUND THE WORLD. 

demands of the city. Standing upon heated sands, by the 
lowest of these tanks, surrounded by donkeys, camels, and 
Arabs, never did water taste sweeter to parched lips. 

Back into Arabia, about seven miles from Aden, there 
begins to be quite a show of vegetable life. Oases multiply 
and widen, till farther on are green fields, small trees, and 
living streams, along which Arabs pitch their nightly tents. 
Thirty miles from the city is a fine river, which English enter- 
prise thinks of turning into Aden. 

Arabia is not the vast, barren desert once supposed. In the 
interior, and among the mountainous portions, are beautiful 
rivers, dense forests, vast pasture-lands, with choice fruits 
and grains. 

ARABIC LITERATURE. 

No traveler can say much in favor of the Arab character. 
The Bedouins, athletic, stout, treacherous, and roving, — wild 
men of the desert portions, — are the degenerate sons of 
Araby's better days. Like all Eastern countries, this, too, 
had its golden age, its period of literature and fine arts. 

While the sacred canon of the Mohammedans was in 
Arabic, the great bulk of their general literature has been in 
the flowing and more musical Persian. During the latter 
part of the dark ages in Europe, the Arabs were the chief 
cultivators of science : their 'literature having previously 
attained a high stage of development. They excelled in 
chemistry, mathematics, history, and poetry. One of their 
poets, Ferdansi, has been compared to Homer. 

Whewell, in his " Ethics of Sir James Macintosh," 
says : — 

" In the first moiety of the middle ages, distinguished Mohammedan 
Arabians, among whom two are known to us by the names of Avie- 
sura and Averroes, translated the ancient Peripatetic writings into their 
own language, expounded their doctrines, in no servile spirit, to their fol- 
lowers, and enabled the European Christians to make those translations 
of them from Arabic into Latin, which in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries gave birth to the scholastic philosophy. ' ' 



FROM INDIA TO ARABIA. — ADEN AND THE ARABS. 249 

This is Aug. 8, and we ship this afternoon for the Red, 
Sea and Egypt. 

" We'll away to Egypt, and rest awhile 
In palm-girt palace beside the Nile, 
And watch from our roof Canopus rise 
In silver splendor 'mid opal skies.'" 

PARTING : STEAMING ALONG THE RED SEA. 

We sailed into the Red Sea through the Straits of Bab-el- 
Mandeb, — " the gate of tears," — so named, doubtless, ^rom 
the dangers of the sea ; which, while lacking a sufficient 
number of light-houses, abounds in African coast-winds, 
rough coral-reefs, and half-hidden rocks, ever the terror 
of navigators. 

Steaming northward, the third day out, and rising with 
the gray gleams of morning, I had another magnificent view 
of the Southern Cross, hanging low in the hazy south-west 
distance. A few nights and mornings thereafter, and it 
faded from our sight forever ; or, at least, till seen by us with 
unsealed eyes from the evergreen shores of the Morning 
Land. 

The withering heat upon the Red Sea was almost beyond 
human endurance. The winds, sweeping from African sands 
west of us, fell upon our panting persons at noonday like 
breaths of fire. Thermometer measurements showed that 
the mercury stood in the sea-water at 90°, and in the air, 
from 95° to 115° in the shade. 

Approaching the terminus of this sea, and standing upon 
the ship's deck in the Gulf of Suez, one sees, lying to the 
east and west, bald, arid deserts, and shrubless mountain 
ridges, warm in each morning's glow, and at noon a tremu- 
lous mirage of burning, glistening mirrors. Farewell, O sea 
of fire ! 

For several miles out from the Suez landing, the sea is 
only from a mile to two and three miles in width. A 
roughly-cut and rugged mountain shuts in the desert upon 



250 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the left ; while from a projecting tongue upon the Egyptian 
side, to a corresponding point upon the Arabian, the Israel- 
ites, led by Moses, are supposed to have crossed. Soundings 
at the present time show six fathoms of water. Sands are 
ever shifting in these Eastern seas: accordingly, a few- 
thousand years ago, there might not have been six feet of 
water at this point. And then, again, the heavy north winds 
pushing, piling the waters southward with a six-feet ebb 
tide, the Israelites might easily have crossed upon dry land. 
On the other hand, a sudden change of wind, the inflowing 
tide, with a not uncommon " water- whirl wind," would nat- 
urally overwhelm and submerge the advancing Egyptians. 
Admitting the literal truth, therefore, of the scriptural rec- 
ord, no miracle was necessary for the preservation of one, or 
the destruction of the other party. Miracles, defined as 
abrogations of natural laws, are simply impossibilities. 

SINAI. 

Naturally skeptical, unbelief arose when our kind-hearted 
captain of " The Aretusa " — who, by the way, is an Austrian 
Spiritualist, well read in the works of Allan Kardec — 
pointed out to us the mountain that, 'mid reported convul- 
sions of nature, saw the "law inscribed on tables of stone." 
Doubts in abeyance for the time being ! Previous to reach- 
ing Suez, there loomed up in the haze upon the Arabian side 
grim and bald mountainous peaks, the highest and most for- 
bidding of which is pronounced to be the Mount Sinai of 
the Pentateuch. Hushed forever are those thunders ; lost 
are the voices of the Syrian prophets; and the land once 
flowing with milk and honey is but a desert waste. Near 
the foot of this ragged Sinai range is the site of Moses' 
wells ; and bright, green spots they are, — the only verdure 
visible. Here it was — so say Jews and Mohammedans — 
that the Israelites quenched their thirst, while Jehovah dis- 
played his power in drowning the wicked Egyptians. This 
Tehovah of the Old Testament, the war-god of Christians, 



FEOM INDIA TO ARABIA. — ADEN AND THE ARABS. 251 

must have been an incorrigible sinner, if the peace princi- 
ples of Jesus are divine. 

SUEZ AND ITS SANDS. 

Mostly a straggling mass of low mud houses, this city of 
ten thousand inhabitants, including some three hundred 
Europeans, is surrounded by a desert region, and naturally 
repulsive to an American. One good hotel, the " Suez,'' with 
any number of disreputable ones, a tall mosque tower, a 
square with no shrubbery, and bazaars full of Oriental goods, 
with Copts and Arabs for salesmen, tell the story of the 
place. Not to mention fleas and lizards, one becomes dis- 
gusted while looking at the sand-clad children who brush 
the flies from their sore, gummy eyes, to look upon the trav- 
eler, and cry " Backsheesh ! " Evidently the glare of the 
noonday sun, and the flying sand, have as much to do with 
the eye-cliseases of Egypt, as syphilis and other scrofulous 
taints. Begging is a profession in Suez. Healthy Arab lads 
will follow you, shouting, " Backsheesh ! " Avhile old men, 
hoary, ragged, and toothless, hobble along after one, mutter- 
ing, "Backsheesh!" It is not strange that the Israelites 
wanted to leave this part of the country. 

THE SUEZ CANAL. 

Just previous to dropping anchor at Suez, our eye caught 
a glimpse of a faint blue thread stretching away into the 
desert toward the north. It was that modern triumph of 
genius, the Suez Canal. Observing ships dragging slowly 
around the coast of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, and 
through the Indian Ocean, for the East, that enterprising 
French engineer, M. F. de Lesseps, proposed to Mohammed 
Said to re-open the ancient canal of Sesostris. Be it remem- 
bered that two, three, and five thousand years ago, when 
Europe had no history, Egypt not only had her canal through 
the lakes across the isthmus, — remnants of the ruins still 
remaining, — but proud old Egypt had other canaLs, with an 
extensive commerce. 



252 AROUND THE "WORLD. 

This canal, -uniting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea 
and the vast waters of the Indian Ocean, one hundred miles 
in length, three hundred and twenty feet in width at the 
top, two hundred and forty-six feet at the bottom, and 
twenty-six feet deep, was formally opened on the 13th of 
October, 1867. At this time, as fortune would have it, we 
were in Constantinople, privileged to see the Austrian 
Francis Joseph, the Prussian Frederick William, the Italian 
Amadeus, now ex-King of Spain, with others in authority, 
on their way to tb.Qfet.es and festivities consequent upon the 
interesting occasion. Prophetic politicians, Lord Palmers- 
ton, and English aristocrats, to the contrary, the Suez Canal 
is a grand success. 

Formerly five thousand vessels sailed to India every year 
around the Cape of Good Hope. Now over a thousand of 
these pass through the Suez Canal ; and the number will in- 
crease, especially since the tolls are so fairly assessed. By 
this canal the distance between London and Bombay has been 
reduced to 3,050 miles, from 5,950 by the Cape. This canal, 
a colossal work, was built at an expense of sixty millions of 
dollars, one-half of which was contributed by the Khedive 
himself. Such ambition is laudable. 

Considering the shifting nature of the sand, the heated bar- 
renness of the desert, the difficulty in procuring fresh water, 
no one can gaze upon the numerous steamers — English 
screws of two thousand tons and more — driving along this 
desert-cut furrow filled with water, and not admire the skill 
of the French engineer, and the enterprise of the Khedive. 
Egypt that was, and then was not, is now waking from the 
dreamy slumbers of weary centuries. 

PROM SUEZ TO CAIRO. 

The Dead, Red, and Mediterranean Seas evidently consti- 
tuted, in the almost measureless past, one body of water. 
At a later period the Red and Mediterranean Seas were 
united, as the sandy contour of the country each side of the 
isthmus plainly indicates. 



FROM INDIA TO ARABIA. — ADEN AND THE ARABS. 25S 

It is about one hundred and fifty miles, if memory serves* 
me, by railway from Suez to Cairo, much of the way lying 
across vast sand-plains, with only an occasional oasis. Let 
us hasten. Here is a patch of palms : how drooping they 
look ! There is a slowly-pacing caravan : how patient the 
poor camels ! There are tenting Arabs ; there a lonely peli- 
can ; there camels and donkeys browsing on a sort of sage- 
brush ; there a squad of Egyptian soldiers ; there a storm of 
sand whirling across our track ; and here a mud-built village, 
a very hive of squalid humanity. Around it cluster 
dates, figs, plums, and flourishing vegetation, the results of 
energy and irrigation. Many of the desert tracts of the 
East may, by this and other methods, be reclaimed, and made 
to blossom as the rose. 

But see ! there are piles of old, moldering ruins ; there 
crumbling walls, and prostrate pillars! What a field for 
exploration ! How often ancient spirits have told us of 
sand-buried cities ! Surely, this was not once the picture of 
desolation that it now is. Oh the sand, the scorching 
sand ! On this August day the thermometer stands at 136 c 
Fahrenheit. It is living at a poor " dying rate ! " 

But we are on the way to the Nile. Wonder if this is the 
route the patriarch Abraham took when going down to 
Egypt to escape the famine ? And was it anywhere in this 
locality that, returning from the "slaughter of the kings," 
he met Melchisedec, the king of peace, the baptized of 
Christ ? 

Worn and weary, this day's railway travel across sands 
reminded me of the Arabian sheik's prayer. "An Arab," 
says Saadi, "journeying across a vast desert, wearily 
exclaimed, ' I pray that, before I die, this my desire may be 
fulfilled : that, a river dashing its waves against my knees, I 
may fill my leathern sack with water ! ' " 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE CITY OF CAIRO. — EGYPT. 

Deliciously gratifying was it to gradually leave the sands, 
and approach, with the lengthening shadows of the day, the 
wide and fertile Valley of the Nile. It was nearly twilight 
when the train reached the city ; and yet, on our way in the 
carriage to the Oriental Hotel, we caught a distinct view of 
Cheops and Belzoni, — two of the great pyramids. The 
sight shot a thrill of satisfaction into my being's core. 

August 18. — This, in one sense at least, was an auspi- 
cious time to reach Cairo, because the third night of the 
yearly illumination in honor of the Viceroy of Egypt. The 
estimated expenditure for the display was half a million. 

They dine in the East at eight o'clock. Strolling out in 
evening-time, after dinner, accompanied by an Egyptian 
guide and Dr. Dunn, I mentally asked, " Is not this dream- 
land ? the lotus-clime of the poet ? the palace realm of the 
' Arabian Nights ' ? " Bright globed and various colored 
lights were distributed through the gardens, and along the 
streets, arching the avenues, whitening the pavements, flick- 
ering in the branches, and sending silvered shafts down into 
playing fountains ; while rockets, serpents, revolving wheels, 
and other kinds of fireworks, blazed out upon the night, 
half paling, for a time, torch and lamps. Not only were tri- 
angular and pyramidal-shaped figures hung with glass lan- 
terns, trimmed and illumined, but theaters, palaces, mosques, 
up to the very summits of their minarets seemed all ablaze 



THE CITY OF CAIRO. — EGYPT. 255 

with a weird, gaseous brightness. The streets and lanes, 
fringed for miles with flags, banners, and costly tapestry 
and transparencies, were literally thronged with carriages and 
giddily -gaping multitudes, some in rags, some in silks and 
satins, and others in the gilded trappings of state. Seen 
externally, it was a most magnificent pageant. Considered 
spiritually, it was the quintessence of babyish folly, — the 
glittering pampering so pleasing to vain royalty. This half 
million, worse than squandered, should have been spent 
in educating ignorant subjects, freeing the country from 
slavery, and feeding the wretched street-beggars. 

Disgusted with the confusioD, the wild excitement, and 
the sham of the show, I returned to my apartment to medi- 
tate. 

Is it a dream ? or am I really in Egypt, the country of 
Hermes, Trismegistus, and Menes the founder of Memphis ? 
Am I in the land of ancient symbolical art, of hieroglyphs, 
obelisks, pyramids, and paintings, of monoliths, sarcophagi, 
and templed tombs? Changed, oh, how changed during 
the devastating decades of two, three, and five thousand 
years ! The sacred Nile still moves on in silent majesty ; 
but no wandering Isis weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. 
The shadow of Typhon's frown falls no more upon the 
tremulous waves of this great rolling river. The lips of 
Memnon, touched, smitten even by rising sunbeams, remain 
voiceless as the sphinx that gazes coldly out upon the vast 
granary-valley of Egypt. Cleopatra and the kingly Ptole- 
mies are only dimly, dreamily remembered ; but those mar- 
vels of towering masonry, those pillared Pyramids, though 
stripped of their marble casings, continue to stand in peer- 
less grandeur, the wonder of the races, the riddle of the 
ages ! 

THE KHEDIVE AND HIS PURPOSES. 

Ismael Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, formerly resided in a 
magnificent palace on the Bosphorus, surrounded by lawns 



256 AROUND THE WORLD. 

and gardens, all arranged in the highest style of Oriental 
elegance. He was educated in Paris. The clear complexion 
and light blonde hair, that he inherited from his Circassian 
mother, give him more the appearance of an Anglo-Saxon 
than an Oriental. He is of medium height, stately in gait, 
with a full forehead, gray eyes, and shrewd expression of 
countenance. 

He is immensely rich, virtually holding the land of Egypt 
in fee simple ; his subjects working it on his terms. The 
proceeds fill his purse too, rather than the pockets of the 
fellahs. Irrigation-canals are bringing a vast amount of bar- 
ren land under cultivation ; four thousand miles of telegraph 
stretch from the Delta over the Nile Valley in every direc- 
tion ; and surveys have been made for the purpose of render- 
ing the Nile navigable its whole course. There will be, within 
a few years, a continuous line of railway from Alexandria to 
Khartoum, near the site of the ancient Meroe at the junction 
of the Blue and White Nile, a distance of fifteen hundred 
miles. Ere long the confines of Egypt will be extended over 
Darfour, Abyssinia, and the Soudan, to the Mountains of the 
Moon, — countries burdened with heavy forests, and abound- 
ing in medicinal plants, in gold, silver, iron, and copper, in 
cotton, rice, and other productions of great commercial value. 
It is said by the Khedive's ardent admirers that wherever he 
pushes his conquests he abolishes the slave-trade. This is 
seriously doubted. Domestic slavery, and polygamy, are 
common in most Mohammedan countries. 

THE CENTRAL AFRICANS AS THEY ARE. 

English scientists sitting in their cozy homes, consulting 
the reports of sea-captains, slave-buyers, and the tales of 
ivory-dealers, write glibly of Africa, and the degraded Afri- 
can tribes. Opinions derived from such sources are utterly 
worthless, as compared with the testimonies of Sir Samuel 
Baker, Prof. Blyden of Liberia, Dr. Livingstone, and other 
distinguished men, long residents in Africa. Dr. Livingstone 
says, — 



THE CITY OF CAIRO. — EGYPT. 257 

" If I had believed a tenth of what I heard from traders, I might nevei 
have entered the coun try. . . . But fortunately I was never frightened in 
infancy with ' bogie,' and am not liable to ' bogiephobia ; ' for such persons 
in paroxysms believe every thing horrible, if only it be ascribed to the 
possessor of a black skin." * 

After speaking of the insight and practical good sense of 
the Bushmen, Livingstone remarks, — 

"Wj all liked our guide Shobo, a fine specimen of that wonderful 
people, the Bushmen." f 

Referring to the race of Makololos, he observes, — 

" Their chief Sebituane came a hundred miles to meet me, and welcome 
me to his country." 

This is an intelligent, kind-hearted race, having no fear of 
death, because believing in immortality. " When I asked the 
Bechuanas to part with some of their relics, they replied, 
' Oh, no ! ' thus showing their belief in a future state of 
existence. The chief boatman often referred to departed 
spirits who called a Placho." $ Treating of the Bakwains, a 
large inland tribe of Africans, Livingstone says, — 

"Though rather stupid in matters that had not come under their 
observations, yet in other things they showed more intelligence than is to 
be met with in our own uneducated peasantry. . . . They are well up in 
the maxims which embody their ideas of political wisdom." § 

Mentioning the keenness of perception manifest among 
the tribes north of the Zambesi, he says, — 

" They all believe that the souls of the departed still mingle among the 
living, and partake in some way of the food they consume. . . . They 
fancy themselves completely in the power of disembodied spirits." || 

.* Livingstone's Africa, p. 542. t Ibid., p. 47. J Ibid., p. 121. 

§ Ibid. , p. 21. || Ibid , 283-287. 



258 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Describing the far inland Manyema men, he pronounces 
them, — 

" Tall, strapping fellows, with but little of what we think distinctive 
of the negro about them. If one relied upon the teachings of phrenology, 
the Manyemas would take a high place in the human family. . . , Many 
of the Manyema women, especially far down the Lualaba, are very pretty, 
light complexioned, and lively." 

Speaking of another race in the interior of Africa, Dr. 
Livingstone says, — 

" They are slender in form, having a light olive complexion. . . . The 
great masses of hair lying upon their shoulders, together with their gen- 
eral features, reminded me of the ancient Egyptians. Some even have 
the upward inclination of the outer angles of the eyes." * 

" The London News," commenting upon Livingstone and 
Stanley, expresses the conviction that " enterprising travelers 
will soon find a full confirmation of those old Egyptian tra- 
ditions handed down to us by Herodotus, which until recent- 
ly were supposed to be romance rather than actual fact. The 
account of the races that Livingstone met indicates that the 
inhabitants of Central Africa have a civilization little dreamed 
of by European anthropologists. And then, the whole 
country is exceedingly fertile, especially in those resources 
which repay commercial enterprise." 

Sir Samuel Baker in his Cambridge lecture made this 
observation : " Central Africa will awake when the first 
steam-launch is seen upon the Albert Nyanza ; " and he added, 
" Nowhere in the world does scenery exist more beautiful, or 
soil more fertile, or climate more healthy to the temperate 
and strong, than those vast and diversified highlands of Cen- 
tral Africa, which inclose these glorious, sparkling seas of 
sweet water, and feed the mighty rivers whose course is so 
far-winding that to this day no man has yet traversed them 
from mouth to fountain." 

The mayor of Monrovia, Liberia, confirming the above 

* Livingstone's Africa, p. 296. 



THE CITY OF CAIRO. — EGYPT. 259 

ttatonients of Dr. Livingstone and Sir Samuel Baker, assured 
me thai the lowest of the Africans were found along the 
sea-coasts : while, the farther one ventured into the interior, 
the Uner and moie intelligent races he found. " Some of the 
tribes," said he, " in Central Africa, bear little or no resem- 
blance to negroes ; being tall, light-complexionecl, ingenious, 
and thoughtful men." Of what racial division of humani- 
ty are these tribes the lingering remnants ? What of their 
origin ? And when was their palmy period ? 

AFRICA THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE SANSCRIT. 

None interested in the " lost arts," or conversant with the 
matchless grandeur of the past, need be informed that the 
ancient Greek and Babylonian historians ever reverted to 
Africa as the once garden of the world. And, marvelous 
as it may seem, many of the root-words applied to the riv- 
ers and mountains in Africa are directly traceable to the 
Sanscrit language. Wise spirits, of remotest antiquity on 
earth, have assured us that the Sanscrit in distant, prehis- 
toric periods, was, if not the universal language, the language 
of the cultured Africans. It was in Africa that this, the 
most perfect of written languages, according to Sir William 
Jones and other Orientalists, originated. Those primitive 
peoples,, acquainted with agriculture, mechanics, art, litera- 
ture, and withal becoming as ambitious as populous, moved 
slowly off in time, through those regions denominated in 
later periods Mizraim (Egypt), Assyria, Iran, Media, into 
Central Asia, where, multiplying, they were called Aryas. 
In a long-subsequent era, they swarmed out from those high 
table-land localities in all directions. A branch of them met 
and mingled with the progenitors of the Cathayans. The 
Malays sprang from this intermixture. The more warlike 
division of these Aryas that moved southward, invading 
India, came to be known as the Aryans. 

This country, protected by mountains on the north, and 
oceans on the south, largely escaped the vandal influences 



260 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

of war. Prospering, they modified and reconstructed their 
literature, preserving it from entire destruction. What 
remains is known as the ancient Sanscrit of India, a reflex 
wave of which ultimately returned to Egypt. Fading 
remnants of this fairer race, degenerate descendants of the 
original African Aryas, still exist in Central Africa. Dr. 
Livingstone describes them as " tall and slender, olive com- 
plexioned, and as intelligent to-day as the peasantry of 
Britain." 

swedenborg-'s most ancient op all bibles. 

Those African Aryas not only possessed a literature, but 
a Bible rich in nature's teachings. Was not this the veritable 
Bible referred to by the Swedish seer ? 

Swedenborg, giving an account in his " Memorable Rela- 
tions " of what he saw and heard in the world of spirits, 
says, "There was a Bible far more ancient than the Jew- 
ish Scriptures, harmonizing perfectly with the revelations of 
nature, most of which was lost. But some scraps were 
gathered by Moses, and preserved, appearing in what is now 
termed the Old Testament. In this remote period of time 
people talked in the language of correspondence ; after- 
wards the symbolic, or pictorial ; this degenerated into the 
hieroglyphical ; and this again into the various dialects spo- 
ken by the Semitic races." He further says (A. C. 1002). 
" The people of these most ancient times never on any 
account ate the flesh of any beast or fowl, but fed solely on 
grains, fruits, herbs, and various kinds of milk." Referring 
to the degeneracy of men, he says, " In the course of time, 
when mankind became cruel and warlike as wild beasts, they 
began to slay animals, and eat their flesh." 

CAIRO AS A CITY. 

The Cairo of to-day, including the old city and the new, 
has an estimated population of five hundred thousand. The 
mixture of races puts to defiance the classifications of eth- 



THE CITY OF CAIRO. — EGYPT. 261 

nologists. Under the administration of the Turkish Khe- 
dive, or reigning" viceroy, the city is rapidly improving. 
The palaces, the public buildings, and the substantial bridge 
across the Nile, are fine specimens of architectural masonry. 
Old Cairo is three miles from the new, and yet there is no 
real break of buildings between them. Modern Cairo seeks 
its model in Paris, not only in extravagance, fashions, and 
luxuries, but in its amusements, gardens, sparkling fountains, 
marble walks, mosaic pavements, and reception-rooms inlaid 
with porphyry and alabaster. The viceroy is still building 
for himself new palaces. Those who wish to see the Cairo 
of the past should not delay. The weird old houses, with 
their polished and fantastic lattice-work, are fast disappear- 
ing. All day long the remorseless chipping and hammering 
of the mason is heard. The constructor is upon his heels ; 
and soon boulevards and flowering gardens will cover alike 
the ruins of the Christian Coptic and the more ancient 
Egyptian. 

THE CITADEL AND THE MUSEUM. 

Rising above the rest of the city, is the grand mosque, 
called the citadel. Standing by this Mohammedan struc- 
ture, one may catch a panoramic view of the whole plateau ; 
the Nile, fringed in living green, rolling at your feet ; at the 
right the tombs of the old caliphs and Mamelukes ; on the 
left the ruins of ancient Cairo ; in the distance emerald is- 
lands, dotting the now swollen Nile ; and, farther off, scores 
of monuments and pyramids pushing their gray shafts up 
toward the heavens. The prospect is magnificent. 

During the day we visited one of the old Coptic churches, 
said by our guide to have been built in the seventh century. 
The paintings of Bible scenes were unique and fantastic, the 
crypts cold and gloomy. 

Among objects of deep interest to travelers is the Egyp- 
tian Museum, situated upon the banks of the Nile, and 
enriched with rarest specimens from ancient Memphis, Heli- 



262 ABOUND THE WOULD. 

opolis, and hundred-gated Thebes. Many of the museums 
of Europe abound in the rare curiosities of old Egypt, and 
yet her ruins are not exhausted. New discoveries are con- 
stantly being made, both in Upper and Lower Egypt. 
Walking through the cabinets of this museum in Cairo, free 
to the public, one may read the history of Egypt for five 
thousand years, — its religion, its art, and domestic life 

"WHAT A SPIRIT SAID TO THE CLAIRATJDIENT EAR. 

While studying the relics of antiquity in this museum, 
and wondering what this and that hieroglyphical figure 
meant, an ancient Egyptian spirit came, and explained them 
clairaudiently to Dr. Dunn. Referring to the manners and 
customs characterizing his period, he said, among other 
things, that the " Great Pyramid, constructed upon mathe- 
matical and astronomical principles, with its seven well- 
aired chambers, was built for a granary, and the coffer for a 
measurer. Others in after periods were constructed for 
different purposes." Speaking of the hieroglyphs, he said, 
" The hawk symbolized war ; the deer fleetness ; the tri- 
angle, trinities ; the yoni, purity, also generative life ; and 
the circle, immortal existence." 

Though the opinion may be considered a wild one, I 
venture the belief that the original Sanscrit was simply 
phonetically abbreviated hieroglyphs. The ancients, instead 
of carefully chiseling the whole hawk, would naturally, after 
a time, convey the thought by drawing the head of the bird, 
then the bill, then the bill-shaped curve, which curve would 
signify war, and emphasized a warrior. 

THE KILOMETER AND NILE. 

Opposite Old Cairo, nestling in the Nile, lies the little isle 
of Koda, the north part of which is occupied by beautiful 
gardens. Arabic tradition assures us that it was here that 
Pharaoh's daughter found " Moses in the bulrushes." If 
these guides are sincere, they deserve only pity. 



THE CITY OF CAIRO. — EGYPT. 263 

The famous Nilometer — Nile-measurer — is located upon 
this island. It did not strike me as any thing very won- 
derful. It consists of a sauare well, in the center of which 
is a graduated pillar, divided into cubits, and surrounded by 
circular stones with inscriptions upon them. Along the 
arches are passages from the Koran in sculpture. The 
whole is surmounted by a dome. The Nile begins to rise 
the latter part of June, reaching its maximum about the 
25th of September. It is watched during this period with 
intense interest; because, if rising too high, it produces 
inundations, destroying crops ; and if not high enough, fill- 
ing the canals and reservoirs, the means of irrigation fail, 
causing infertility and famines. The yearly rise is from 
twenty to forty feet,, depositing over the fertile valley a rich 
sediment of nearly two inches in thickness. It is to be 
hoped that before our Stanley leaves Africa, the sources of 
the Nile will no longer be geographical problems. Strabo, 
the ancient geographer, mentions the Nilometer. Diodorus 
informs us that it was in use during the period of the Pha- 
raonic kings; and Herodotus speaks of its measuring the 
Nile waters when he visited Egypt twenty-three hundred 
years ago. Though not a vestige of rain has fallen now 
for nearly six months, the river at the present time is very 
high and muddy. During inundations the rise is pro- 
claimed daily in the streets of Cairo. The rainy season 
lasis about three months. 

CAIRO STREETS. 

These are crowded in evening time with unique vehicles, 
veiled women, loose-jointed camels and little donkeys with 
their dark-skinned drivers. The back streets are narrow and 
ill-smelling. The electric cars are poorly manned. The pyra- 
mids, forty centuries old, here look down upon electricity and 
steam. Pharaoh and Edison shake hands. The most ancient 
and the most modern civilization jostle each other along the 
streets. Let us meditate ! 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Egypt's catacombs and pyramids. — appeabance of 
the egyptians. 

In physique the Egyptians of to-day are larger and much 
stouter in organic structure than the Hindoos, yet evidently 
lack their intellectual activity. Physically they are a well- 
formed race, with an expressive face, retreating forehead, jet 
black eyes, full lips, prominent nose, broad shoulders, and 
beautiful teeth. Their complexions — strangely blended — 
vary ; the darkest are doubtless the descendants of the 
pyramid-builders. Those having an infusion of Arabian 
blood in their veins are exceedingly hardy and stalwart. 
The women veil their faces, all except their eyes. A cer- 
tain class, however, as do some Syrians, veil their faces com- 
pletely. The reasons assigned refer to the harem, and the 
" look " of temptation. 

Dress, with Egyptian men, consists of trousers, — literally 
a red bag through which the feet are thrust, — a tight under- 
shirt, probably white when clean ; a short, flying over- 
jacket ; a heavy, sash-like fold of cloth about the waist ; and 
a red-tasseled " tartouche " upon the head, around which is 
twisted a fanciful coiffure. All classes wear the tartouche, 
even those who otherwise doff the European dress. Trav- 
elers frequently put it on, thinking to pass for old citizens. 
Have they forgotten the " brayer " in the "lion's skin"? 
Could I speak but one word to the Khedive of Egypt, that 
word should be education, — educate the people ! 



THE CITY OF CAIRO. — EGYPT. 265 



THE PYRAMIDS, THE PYRAMIDS 



A picnic from Cairo to the pyramids is one of the easiest 
things, nowadays, in the world. The Great Pyramid, Che- 
ops, is only some ten or twelve miles from the city, and a 
fine carriage-road ; but this is not the route for tourists 
desirous of seeing other pyramids, the ruins of Memphis, 
Heliopolis, and the tombs at Sakkarah. 

Accompany us. It is seven o'clock in the morning, car- 
riage at the door, the lunch-basket filled, the guide ready. 
The streets are yet comparatively quiet. Starting westward, 
we cross the bridged Nile, and pass along its banks, under 
overarching acacias, by a palatial structure of the viceroy's, 
in process of completion, by quaint buildings of less promi- 
nence, by mud-built huts, toward Geezah. Here we alight, 
and take to the cars as far as the Bardshain station, where, 
finding mules and muleteers, we are off through crooked 
paths to the ruins of Memphis. Donkey-riding is doleful 
business for a tall man, inasmuch as feet dangling in the 
sand become neither grace nor comeliness. But see those 
heavily-laden camels on their way to the market, those 
toilers winnowing grain by fickle wind-gusts, and, beyond, 
those beautiful groves of date-palms, reddening and ripening 
to load the tables of the rich ! 

Now we are upon the threshold of the Memphian ruins. 
Though level with the ground, or buried in the sand, they 
cover a vast plain. Egyptian priests informed Herodotus 
that Memphis was founded by Menes, a very ancient king 
of Egypt, and noted for having turned the Nile from its 
course, making a large tract of dry land upon which to 
build a city. In hieroglyphs, Memphis was styled Manofre. 
the "land of the pyramids," the "city of the white wall." 
According to Diodorus, this wall was seventeen miles in 
length, girdling and guarding the city against armies, and 
the annual overflow of the " Eternal River." The city, 
once or twice rebuilt, had suffered terribly from the Persians 



266 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

when Herodotus saw it. Among its most magnificent 
temples was that of Phtah. Near this temple, at the gate, 
were statues, one fifty feet high, made of light-colored 
silicious limestone. At the entrance of the east gate, there 
lies, at present, the statue of a Memphian god, two-thirds 
buried in the sand. It is red granite, about twenty feet in 
length, beautifully chiseled, highly polished, and lies nearly 
upon the face. Other statues and unique relics have been 
found in this vicinity. If you look at them, however, a 
swarm of beggars, with their attending flies and fleas, fasten 
to you. The pest of travelers are these begging Bedouin 
Arabs. Their bullying, gesticulating, importuning imperti- 
nences are supremely contemptible. Giving them less or 
more, they are still unsatisfied. 

Let us on, over brick-dust, broken pottery, carved images, 
and shifting sands, some two miles to Sakkarah, the vast 
subterranean tomb-lands of the old empire, called the " Sak- 
karah plateau of the dead." With the exception of a 
single modern stone building, Sakkarah is a grassless, shrub- 
less, houseless cemetery of robbed tombs. Acres are honey- 
combed and mummiless ; and still nearly a thousand men, 
under the auspices of government, are employed excavating 
and digging for relics and antiques. The treasures found 
daily are kept secret. 

Ascending a little hill, the eye could take in, at a single 
sweep, eleven pyramids. They are neither of the same size 
nor shape, nor have they the same angles. One very targe 
one before us is square, yet pyramidal-domed. Others, 
square at the base, are nearly round up a little distance, and 
pagoda-storied near the summit, all clearly indicating that 
they were built at different periods, and for diverse purposes. 
Travelers mention about one hundred and forty pyramids, 
and all within nearly one degree of latitude, clustering in 
and along through Middle Egypt. Thebes, on the same 
side of the Nile as Cairo, is about ten days up the river. 
They measure distances here in the East not by miles, but 
by hours and days. 



Egypt's catacombs and pyramids. 267 

Let us go into the Memphian catacombs. The ponderous 
•gate of death swings on its rusty hinges. The guides light 
their tapers. The main passage, several hundred yards in 
length, is cut in a solid limestone rock. To the right and 
left of this arched avenue are niches filled with large sarco- 
phagi. These, chipped and hewn from the hard granite, 
are beautifully polished and hieroglyphed, but empty. 
Vandals of the past robbed them of their embalmed remnants 
of mortality. There were twenty-seven of these sarcophagi, 
one of which, resembling pure porphyry, was constructed 
by King Bis for his last resting-place. History puts him 
down as a vain, ambitious ruler. Might he not, in his 
dying hour, have uttered the following ? — 

" Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness ! 
This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms, 
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him ; 
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, 



And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, 
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
This many summers in a sea of glory. 

Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye ! " 

A little distance from this range of catacombs, we visited 
the excavated cave-tombs of Seri-biana. The mummied 
forms, with the gaudy casing and linen wrapping, had been 
removed. Approaching the grim cavity, a fox leaped out, 
and fled into the distance. It reminded me of Hosea 
Ballou's famous " Fox Sermon," from the passage, " O 
Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the desert ! " This 
was a magnificent tomb,. with the two pillars at the entrance 
arranged in Masonic order, and twelve others surrounding 
the sarcophagus, each full four feet, made of a magnesian 
limestone composition, hard as rock, and decorated with 
hieroglyphics. Egypt wrote her public history on walls, 



268 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

towers, and obelisks. But in these tombs are inscriptions 
setting forth the names and titles of the deceased, followed 
by an address to Anubis, guardian of tombs, and also to the 
gods beyond the river of death, asking them to be favorably 
disposed toward the individual in his journeyings to the 
Elysian lands of the blessed. 

Wandering among the subterranean temples and tombs of 
Sakkarah, site of the ancient Memphis, and reflecting upon 
the gigantic size of these rock-cut granitic graves, long since 
ruthlessly deprived of their mummied wealth, the wonder 
increased how such huge masses of stone were ever brought 
here so finely cut, and each fitted to its place. Those 
ancient Egyptians certainly had mechanical knowledge, and 
powers of moving immense blocks, of which we are com- 
paratively ignorant. And, by the way, these Ramsean 
temples and tombs were as much a marvel to the Grecian 
Herodotus as they are to us. 

" SIX MILES TO CHEOPS ! " 

So sings out our jolly guide. It seems very much nearer. 
The sun is slowly declining ; let us hasten. Any thing but a 
contrary donkey for locomotion ! Effort is useless : the 
stupid brute will hunt his own sand-path. Now we pass a 
herd of breeding camels, with their young ; there a miser- 
able mud-built Bedouin camp ; there a little patch of crisped 
vegetation ; and, just beyond, a turbid-looking back-water 
cove from the swollen Nile. This we must drink, or thirst. 
Surely, — 

"Every pleasure hath its pain, and every sweet a snare." 

But here we are, under the shadow of the Sphinx, hewn, 
cut, and polished, from a reddish solid limestone rock, and 
resting in its original position. With the body of a lion, and 
the head of a man, emblematic of strength and wisdom, it 
has gazed coldly, with prophetic eye, for thousands of years, 
upon the fertilizing Nile. The rough-featured face, shame- 




Egyptian Magician. 



EGYPT'S CATACOMBS AND PYRAMIDS. 269 

fully defaced, conveys the impression of thoughtfulness and 
a fixed resolution. The architect evidently fashioned it to 
represent Che-ops-see, the builder of the Great Pyramid. 
Cheops, alias Che-ops-see, was deified after his death as 
" Ramses the Great ! " Ram, Rama, Ramses, are famous 
names in India to-day, as well as historic landmarks in the 
palmier days of the Asia and Africa of the dreamy past. 
On the Sphinx was hieroglyphed thename of this great Icing 
of the world, " Ramses the Great ! " 

The figure, according to the measurement of Prof. C. P. 
Smyth, Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and other distinguished 
explorers, is thirty-seven feet above the sand-surface, and 
something like thirty-seven feet below. It is twenty-nine 
feet across the wig, for the image, remember, has a colossal 
beard. The lips and protruding lower jaw typify a deficient 
moral organization. Owing to the perusal of imaginative 
and overdrawn descriptions of the Sphinx, it quite disap- 
pointed me, both in size and the architectural elegance of 
the workmanship. Still it is a wonder, — a deathless monu- 
ment guarding a desert waste ! 

One quarter of a mile more to the foot of Cheops. Who 
would tarry long at the Sphinx ? Off and away, donkeys ! 
They become spirited. See, they actually gallop ! But, 
" ha ! ha ! " here we are at the base of the Great Pyramid ! 
Casting an eye toward its dizzy summit, language proves 
inadequate ! Every fiber of my being flames with the grand, 
the majestic, the inexpressible! Come, Beverly, — mad 
philosopher of New Zealand, — come, bringing your dia- 
grams and figured calculations, and let us explore them 
together. Do you not remember, friend Beverly, how we 
nightly talked of the pyramids, last winter, till the clock 
struck ten ; ate fruit, and talked on about the Pvramids ; 
turned the slate, stirred the fire, and still talked about the 
old Pyramids ? Hark ! the bell rings out upon the clear 
midnight air, — Twelve ! and still the pyramid-mania rages. 
You, Mr. Beverly, in the estimation of the ignorant Dune- 



270 AROUND THE WORLD. 

din rabble, was a crack-brained enthusiast ; and self, a crazy 
Spiritualist just loose from some American madhouse. 
Laughing at all such pious rage, we remembered, that, when 
Bunyan's lions became too old and toothless to bite, they 
gratified their vicious dispositions by growling. Sectarians, 
harmless nowadays, can only growl. 

But the pyramids ! Cheops, built strictly upon geomet- 
rical and astronomical principles, faces due north, south, east, 
and west. And, according to the measurement of Col. How- 
ard Vyse, the base of this pyramid is 764 feet, and the verti- 
cal height 480 feet, with a basical area of thirteen acres, one 
rood, and twenty-two poles. The quantity of masonry is 
89,028,000 cubic feet, with a weight of 6,848,000 tons ; the 
space occupied by chambers and interior passages being 
something over 56,000 cubic feet of the immense mass. 
Greek authors state that 500,000 laborers, comprising gov- 
ernment captives and bondsmen, were employed during a 
period of" twenty-five years in putting up and completing 
the structure. To fully realize the magnitude of this desert 
Titan, one should walk around it, and then, looking up to 
its dizzy height of five hundred feet, reflect that the granite 
blocks which furnish the outside of the third, and a portion 
of the inside of the first pyramid, came, if not manufactured 
on the spot, all the way from the first cataract ; and that out- 
wardly these monumental giants were originally covered 
with silicious limestone, or marble, highly polished. These 
facts considered, and the magnificence, the pristine splendor, 
begin to become manifest. 

UP, UP TO THE APEX. 

Our dragoman engaging three Bedouin Arab assistants for 
each, we were ready for the ascent. Full of pluck, we start 
up the stony steep, scaling block after block. A stout Arab 
clasps each of our hands firmly. Getting weary, the third 
" boosts" — if there's a more classic word to convey the 
idea, use it. Though fun at first, fatigue and exhaustion 



EGYPT'S CATACOMBS AND PYRAMIDS. 271 

soon follow. " Bravo ! a third of the way up : take a rest," 
shout the guides. Another start, but not so gay and gritty 
as the first. Up, and still upward ; the air seems too light 
for breathing. Pity be to the short-winded ! blessings to the 
long-legged ! all deformities have their uses. 'Tis done ! 
Our feet press the summit ! Hallelujah ! The apex, seen 
at a distance as a point, proves to be an area full twelve 
feet square, from which the view is absolutely magnificent. 
Northward, you look down the river upon the Delta, with its 
patches of green, groups of palms, and long files of patient 
camels. Southward, you gaze up the river, fringed with 
waving date-palms, penciled in gold against the delicate sky ; 
fields of vegetation, green and yellow ; flocks of black and 
brown sheep, with attending shepherds ; peasant-women 
bearing water-jars upon their heads ; and, farther on, the 
ashes of the ancient Memphis. Eastward, upon Cairo, with 
its glittering domes, minarets, labyrinthine streets, dazzling 
bazaars, public squares, coffee-houses, three hundred mosques 
for Mahometan prayers, and the gracefully-towering citadel, 
grand and gorgeous, crowning the whole. Westward 
stretches in the clear distance the African Sahara, undefin- 
able and immeasurable ; while at your feet, seemingly, rolls 
the majestic Nile, great river-god of the old Egyptians, 
whose sculptured figures they wreathed with lotus-flowers, 
and filled his extended arms with their ripened fruits and 
grains. Let us linger upon this desert Mount of Transfigura- 
tion, and meditate. But where — Where's the doctor? 

A SEANCE ON" THE PYRAMIDS. 

Sunny and joyous, Dr. Dunn and his Arab aids started 
first to make the ascent ; but for some unaccountable reason 
they had not yet reached the pinnacle. Looking over the 
precipitous stone terraces, there he was, full a third of the 
way down. "What's the matter? "we inquired. "Why 
those gesticulations, and why the delay ? " — " Dun no," was 
the Arab response in broken English. " Well, go down and 



272 AROUND THE WORLD. 

help them." A shrug of the shoulders said No! Becoming 
alarmed, I exclaimed with strong emphasis, " Q-o down after 
them! - " They stood mute and stolid as statues. Impul- 
sively taking all the silver from my pocket, — a precious 
little, — and giving it to the leader, I repeated, " Go to the 
rescue ! " Down they went. Alone now upon the Pyramid !: 
what a moment ! But here the whole party comes ; Dr. 
Dunn unconsciously entranced, and the Arabs, all excited, 
frightened at his " fits." The mystery was solved. 

The trance is closely allied to hypnotism, originally called 
mesmerism, and later termed psychology, biology and electro- 
biology. 

Hypnotism is from hypnos, a Greek word signifying sleep ; 
and this sleep produced by the will may be accomplished 
either by the transference of a refined, etherealized fluid, or 
by suggestion. 

The brain is a magnet ; and around every object in nature, 
the atom," the crystal, the ivy, there is an invisible atmo- 
sphere, an emanating aura. Independent clairvoyants see 
it. 

This aural effluence, encircling all objects, extends off from 
one to five and fifteen feet from the individual accord- 
ing to the will and soul-potency. Spirits make use of this 
aura in entrancing their sensitive subjects. 

A change ; owing to inharmonious conditions, the entrance- 
ment is spasmodic. How the Arabs stare ! It is difficult to 
keep them at a distance. 

But listen : another spirit has taken possession. What 
dignity in the attitude ! and what a deep-toned voice ! — 

' ' Traveler, you stand now upon the summit of one of the world's 
wonders, — a mountain of stone rising from trackless sands. I once 
lived under these skies, vestured in a mortal body. The same majestic 
river rolled through the valley; but winds, storms, shifting sands, and 
maddened convulsions, have changed all else. This pyramid, upon 
which I often gazed, was even then more a matter of tradition than his- 
tory. It must have received its final cap-stone over ten thousand years 
since. Our time was measured by ruling dynasties. My years o?i earth 



Egypt's catacombs and pyramids. 273 

eeem now like a half-forgotten dream. Starry worlds have faded, 
islands have risen from the ocean; continents have disappeared; thronged 
cities have perished; conquering kings have been born, ruled, died, 
and been forgotten; but this Titanic monument of the desert still 
stands in stately solitude. And yet nothing earthly is immortal; this 
pillared pile of composite, of granite, and of porphyry is slowly, surely 
crumbling. Only the undying soul, the templed pyramid of divinity 
within, is eternal. See, then, O stranger and pilgrim! that every thought, 
deed, act, — each a 'living stone ' placed in the spiritual temple you are 
constructing, — is polished, and fitted to its place with the master's 
' mark. ' 

" But you wish to know the purpose of this, the oldest of the pyra- 
midal structures. The aim was multiform. Carefully considering the 
constellations, the position of the North Star, and the shadow cast by 
the sun at the time of the equinoxes, it was built upon mathematical 
principles, to the honor of the Sun- God that illumines and fructifies the 
earth; built for the preservation of public documents and treasures dur- 
ing wars of invasion, and built as a storehouse for grains during famines 
and devastating floods, with that mystic coffer in the center, as an exact 
measurer for the world. A universal system of weights and measures, 
a universal currency, and a universal government, were Utopian theories 
of the ancients before my period of time. This pyramid was not built 
by forced toil, and at a great sacrifice of life, but by gratuitous contribu- 
tions, the servants of the wealthy doing the manual labor. There are 
seven granary apartments in the structure, with shafts leading from each 
to the common granary of the coffer, now called the King's Chamber. 
These shafts have not yet, to my knowledge, been discovered. 

"During long rains and terrible floods, ancient Memphis was twice 
swept away, — once even to its walls, with all its inhabitants, in a single 
D'.ght. Convulsions of nature, and terrible floods, were then common, 
immediately after one of these, this pyramid was commenced, requiring 
more than a generation in the construction. It was completed before 
the great flood, and the wars of the shepherd kings. 

" Once in my time the water rose, and rolled over the very apex of 
these stones. It rained forty-Jive consecutive days; and, while torrents swept 
down the Nile Valley from the south, stout, heavy winds from the Medi- 
terranean drove the water up the country, piling wave upon wave, till 
this structure was completely submerged. But, though thus buried in the 
flooding waters, the treasures and well-filled granaries remained to feed, 
when the waters subsided, the famishing people who had fled southward 
to the hilly country. There seems to be less water upon the face of the 
earth now than then. Liquids are becoming solids, and change in every 
department of being is doing its destined work. Only pyramids of 
truth, constructed of immutable principles, are eternal. 



274 AEOUND THE WORLD. 

" Che-ops-see, the great king of the world, died in Thebes. Em- 
balmed by the priests, he was placed, after a time, in this pyramid, as a 
mark of honor for having conceived and planned a monument serving as 
the savior of his subjects. Finally, the sarcophagus removed, he was 
godded, or deified, Ramses the First ; and the Sphinx, that calm, weird, 
unreadable face, now mutilated by a degenerate people, was designed to 
hand the outlines of his physiognomy down to posterity. I must leave. 
Stranger from a foreign country, do well the work appointed you, that, 
when ashes and sands claim their own, you may be prepared for the 
fellowship of those ancient spirits of whom you seek counsel." 

We have reported this Egyptian spirit's ideas and words 
as best we could. Take them for what they are worth, mak- 
ing history, hieroglyph, and reason the umpire of decision. 
Powhatan, the good Indian spirit, came, and, noting the 
waning of the western sun as a symbol of the fading-away 
of the aboriginal tribes before a merciless civilization, said 
they went down like setting stars, to rise into the better con- 
ditions of the Morning Land. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

STUDY OF THE PYRAMIDS. — SIGHT OF THE GREAT 
PYRAMID. 

Though in no wise smitten with the pyramid mania, still I 
must say that the image of the Great Pyramid, sitting so 
kingly upon the African side of the Nilotic Valley, can 
never be effaced from the picture-gallery of my soul's mem- 
ory chambers. 

WHEN ? — WHAT OF IT ? 

"I asked of Time : ' To whom arose this high, 
Majestic pile, here moldering in decay ? ' 
He answered not, but swifter sped his way, 
With ceaseless pinions winnowing the sky. 



I saw Oblivion stalk from stone to stone : 
' Dread power ! ' I cried, ' tell me whose vast design ' — 

He checked my further speech in sullen tone : 
- "Whose once it was, I care not : now 'tis mine ! ' " 

Strangely, and with widely different eyes, do men of cul- 
ture look at the tablets, carvings, memorials, and teaching 
monuments of antiquity. Many surface-thinking Americans 
have sneered at them ; while others have scofnngly mocked 
the fading memories of their inspired constructors. A New 
5Tork journalist, while traveling in the East a few years 
since, spotted a bit of clean manuscript paper with this par- 
agraph : " These old pyramids, useless and crumbling, are 
only ugly piles of stones, covering a few acres of howling 



276 AROUND THE WORLD. 

desert." This style has been too common with the flippant, 
the facile, and the ambitious, from the time of Pliny, down 
to the novelist Sir Walter Scott. 

It is needless to remind the historian that the old Greeks 
were exceedingly indignant with their distinguished traveler, 
Halicarnassus, who, after having explored, extravagantly 
praised the pyramids 

" What ! " said these vain Greeks ; " does not onr own divine Glreece 
possess monuments more worthy of intelligent admiration ? Had not 
Greece the omphalos, or navel-stone of the whole earth, to show in the 
temple of Delphi, in order to prove that Greece was the center of the 
vast world's plain ? Were not Greek rocks and hills, Greek fountains and 
groves, all hallowed by the presence of Grecian gods and goddesses of 
every degree ? And were not the then inhabitants of Greece descended 
by direct line from those superhuman beings ? What need had a Greek 
to go to distant Egypt, and admire any thing not erected by genius of 
Grecian artists?" 

Still, in the face of the most virulent opposition, in spite 
of the boastful Greeks 500 B.C., in spite of Rome's proud 
Csesars, in spite of twenty-five hundred years of persistent 
attempts to sneer down and write down these monarchs of 
the ages, there they stand, irrepressible, — absolutely refus- 
ing to be driven or scribbled into oblivion ! 

OPINIONS OF THINKERS AND SAVANTS. 

Saying nothing of German and French scholars who have 
visited, measured, and written of the pyramids, — nothing 
of Prof. John Greaves, Col. Howard Vyse, Sir Gardner 
Wilkinson, and other men of letters, — we turn with pride 
to Prof. C. Piazza Smythe, Astronomer Royal of Scotland. 
When this erudite and eminent gentleman proposed to make 
accurate measurements and scientific observations touching 
Egypt's pyramidal glories, his fellow professors in the uni- 
versity exclaimed, " What ! you, too, a believer in the 
pyramids? Can you imagine for a moment that the 
ancients had a knowledge of mechanics, of science, lost to 



STUDY OF THE PYEAMTDS. 277 

moderns ? You will lose your reputation as an astronomer 
if you begin to meddle with the pyramids ! " Prof. Smythe 
replied thus id substance : — 

" As a university professor, I deem it strictly in accordance with the 
methods of modern science to test any and every material thing what- 
ever by observation, by measure, and by the most rigid examination. 
These ever-recurring questions demand rational answers : Why hangs 
there so much historic lore about the Great Pyramid? Why is it 
referred to in the legends of nearly all the Eastern nations ? Why has it 
so often been claimed as a treasure-house of scientific information? 
What need, upon the Egyptian-tomb theory, had the corpse of a king 
for a thorough and complete system of ventilation to his sarcophagus- 
chamber ? Why was the interior of the king's tomb so perfectly plain, 
and void of all ornament of carving, painting, or hieroglyphics, when 
his subjects reveled in such things up to the utmost extent of their 
wealth ? Why were the passages leading to the supposed secret sepul- 
chral chamber lined with white stone, as if to lead a would-be depreda- 
tor, and without a chance of missing his way, right up to the very place 
where, on the sepulchral theory, he ought not to go ? Why was so dif- 
ferent a shape employed for a king's tomb to all his subjects' tombs, 
prince and peasant alike ? Why did pyramid-building cease so early in 
Egyptian history, that it had become a forgotten art in the times of 
Egypt's chief greatness under the so-called new empire at Thebes, 
Luxor, and Karnak, yet an empire earlier than the siege of Troy ; when 
the Egyptian kings, too, were richer, more despotic, and more fond of 
grand sepulture, than at any former period of their history ? " 

To investigate, and, if possible, rationally answer these 
pressing inquiries, Prof. Smythe, collecting and packing his 
measuring instruments, sailed — accompanied by his brave 
wife — on a stormy November's morning, for Egypt, to spend 
the winter in the study of the pyramids. Consulting the 
viceroy, "his royal highness" granted him twenty men to 
remove debris, clear the passages, and otherwise assist in the 
measurements. 

Fixing his abode in the eastern cliff of Pyramid Hill, the 
professor, in due time, with lamps, measuring-rods, note- 
books, and Arab assistants, went into the entrance-passage 
on the north side, forty-seven inches high by forty-one wide, 



278 AROUND THE WORLD. 

to commence the all-important work of exact measurements. 
These were necessary steps in order to draw the legitimate 
deductions. And the whole enterprise was worthy the 
Scotch astronomer, and the occasion. 

THE GLORY OF GHEEZEH. 

Reaching the great pyramid of Gheezeh, across the desert 
from Sakkarah, quite late in the afternoon, we lost no time 
in commencing the work of sight-seeing. The general mass 
of this giant edifice, covering, as it does, over thirteen acres 
with solid masonry, is rather roughly, yet substantially built. 
The blocks of stone upon the outside — the largest, I should 
judge, being four feet in width, by sis or eight in length — 
are handsomely squared, keyed to each other, and cemented 
on their surfaces. The material is mostly limestone ; and the 
blocks have the appearance of "made material," — a compo- 
sition of magnesian limestone, sand, and cement. These 
constituents constitute a species of rock much like that now 
being made in the city of Alexandria to outline and bulwark 
the harbor. It is the opinion of many that all the blocks were 
chemically manufactured by the ancient Egyptians. This 
class of writers put the construction of the pyramids back in 
the past some twenty thousand years. Such of the polished 
stone blocks as are worked into the astronomically- 
constructed entrance-passages are hard, and almost as white 
as alabaster. These evidently came from the Mok-at-tam Hills 
on the Arabian side of the Nile ; while those enormous gran- 
ite slabs in the interior must have been brought — if not 
manufactured on the spot — from the Syene quarries, five 
hundrad and fifty miles up the Nile. 

" Recount to me the beauties of the Nile : 
No more of Tigris and Euphrates sing ; 
Those days of joy in Gheezeh and the Isle, 
Their memories ever round my heart will cling." 







MatLommedan Hermit. 



STUDY OF THE PYRAMIDS. 279 

THE INTERIOR STRUCTURE. 

Though the climate of Egypt is tropical, and generally dry, 
time with its disintegrating forces has rapidly changed the 
pyramidal monument of Gheezeh since the outside casings of 
polished limestone and marble were torn off by the Arab sul- 
tans of Cairo. Entering the pyramid at a descending angle 
of twenty-seven degrees, and wending our way downward at 
first half-bent, led by Arab guides, and then up the ascend- 
ing passage for a long distance, we entered the King's 
Chamber, the floor of which rests upon the fiftieth course of 
stone forming the whole pyramidal mass. This chamber is a 
magnificent oblong apartment thirty-four feet in length, 
seventeen feet broad, and nineteen feet high, formed of mon- 
strous yet elegantly polished blocks of granite, but utterly 
destitute of ornament, painting, or every thing save that 
plain, puzzling, yet time-defying coffer. The glaring lights 
gave the room a dismal appearance ; and our voices sounded 
fearfully strange and sepulchral. The granite walls of the 
chamber surrounding the coffer are divided into five horizon- 
tally equal courses ; and there is also a sign of the " division 
into five " over the doorway outside. Five, it is well known, 
is the ruling and most important number in mathematics. 

THE PORPHYRITIC COFFER. 

But this hollow, lidless, rectangular box, chest, or coffer of 
imperishable stone in the center of the King's Chamber, — 
what of this ? Why so very plain ? Why lidless, and minus 
any inscriptions? And, further, why much of the pyramid 
made as though in subservience to it ? 

When this pyramid was first broken into, remember, by 
Caliph Al Mamoon, more than a thousand years since, he 
expected to find immense treasures, with the key to all the 
sciences. Tradition has it that this pyramid had been pre- 
viously discovered, explored, and robbed by the ancient 
Romans. Be this as it may, the Moslem caliph, to his great 



280 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

disappointment, found nothing but the empty porphyry 
coffer, — the riddle of riddles ! 

CONTINUED INVESTIGATIONS. 

Dropping all preconceived theories, this Edinburgh pro- 
fessor, after noting the sloping key-line stones in the passage, 
the mystic number five, and the seven overlappings of the 
grim walls, began his series of measurements by measuring 
the size, shape, and position of every stone in the passages ; 
also the walls, the floor, the roof, and the ceiling of the 
King's Chamber ; and, to guard against any possible error, 
he repeated these measurements at three different times. 
" It was not until after two months of apprenticeship at 
pyramid mensuration," says this savant, " that I undertook 
that most important question of the precise angle of the 
grand gallery." The mathematical mensuration finished, 
he ordered his assistants to carry the boxes containing the 
instruments — the large altitude azimuth circle and telescope 
— to the top of the structure, that, in connection with his 
geometrical calculations, he might make the necessary 
astronomical observations. This must have been a sublime 
spectacle ! — a profound scholar studying the rising and cul- 
minating positions of different stars, those stellar mile- 
stones along the ethereal spaces, in the silent night-time, 
under those clear and cloudless skies of Egypt. 

RESULTS OF RESEARCH. 

Besides solving puzzling problems, these investigations of 
John Taylor, Profs. Greaves, Smythe, and others, with the 
mathematical calculations of A. Beverly, Esq., Dunedin, 
N. Z., demonstrate, clearly demonstrate, the marvelous fore- 
sight and wisdom of the most ancient Egyptians, especially in. 
the application of symbolism, by a speaking arrangement of 
parts to science, and to pictorial expressions of the recondite 
principles of nature. 

T. — The heaviest winds of the Orient, especially in the 



STUDY OF THE PYRAMIDS. 281 

monsoon seasons, are from the south-west and north-east. 
These strike the corner angles, rather than the facial fronts 
of the pyramids, thus tempering the storms to the preserva- 
tion of the structures. And then they are located in that 
latitude best designed to prevent the African sands from 
swooping down upon certain fertile localities of the Nile. 
Further, the form of their structures is founded upon the 
extreme and mean ratio, so well known to geometricians. 

II. — The size of the Great Pyramid, Cheops, is so nicely 
proportioned upon mathematical and architectural principles, 
as to indicate the number of revolutions made by the earth 
on its yearly axis in terms of a certain unit of linear measure ; 
while other numbers measure the length of the semi-axis of 
the earth's rotation. 

III. — The angle of inclination towards its central axis is 
such that its vertical hight is to the continued length of the 
four sides of its base as the radius to the circumference of a 
circle ; and this is a fractional quantity lying at the very base 
of mathematics. 

IV. — This unit of linear measure, alias unit of length, was 
the same as the cubit of the Hebrews, and identical with the 
inches of our ancestral Anglo-Saxons, and the present British 
inch, into less than a thousandth part. Practically, then, 
the unit of linear measure in the pyramid is the same in 
length as the American inch. Thus may our mensuration be 
traced through Britain, Rome, Greece, to Egypt of the 
pyramidal era. 

V. — The geometrical knowledge of the pyramid-builders 
began where Euclid's ended ; for Euclid's forty-seventh 
problem, said to have been discovered by Pythagoras, and to 
have caused the sacrifice of a whole hecatomb of oxen, is 
sommon all through the pyramids. 

" When the great Samian sage his noble problem found, 
A hundred oxen dyed with their life-blood the ground." 



282 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

VI. — The subterranean chamber shows the extraordinary 
way in which it points out the pyramid's axis, thus indicating 
a solution of the problem which has occupied the attention 
of geometers in all ages, viz., the trisection of angles ; 
while the metrical square shows how the unit measures of 
the pyramid are related to one another, to the earth's 
radius of curvature in lat. 30°, and the pyramid as a unitary 
structure. 

VII. — The polished coffer in the heart of the pyramid, 
representing the cube of a marked linear standard, is based 
upon principles referring to the specific gravity of all the 
earth's interior substance; and, to use the language of. 
the celebrated John Taylor, " It precisely measures the four 
cheoners of the Hebrews, and also the one chalder, or 
four quarters, of the Anglo-Saxon system, to such a nicety, 
that the present quarters " in which British and American 
farmers measure their wheat are the veritable quarters of 
the stone coffer in the King's Chamber. 

In brief, while the Great Pyramid indicates astronomically 
that the "North Pole is moving toward Eastern Asia," the 
coffer not only shows the method of dividing the circle into 
degrees, and bisecting angles generally, but this porphyry 
coffer is the standard measure to-day of capacity and weight 
with the two most enlightened nations of earth, — England 
and America, — " ruling," as Prof. Smythe says, " the approxi- 
mate size of our British quarters, tons, and pounds. These 
admissions furnish the key-proofs, that, while the coffer was 
designed by the king for a standard measure, the hollow 
chambers were built for granaries, and the receptacle of 
treasures and records during wars and floods. Further 
explorations will discover other chambers, making seven, 
and all ingeniously connected with the King's Chamber." 

This Edinburgh professor, treating of his astronomical 
observations, says, " I have ascertained by recent measures, 
much more actually than was known before, that the Great 
Pyramid had been erected under the guidance of astronom- 



STUDY OF THE PYRAMIDS. 283 

ical science, . . . and that the entrance-passage had been 
pointed at the star a Draconis when crossing the meridian 
below the pole, at a distance of 3° 42' ; . . . accordingly 
this star's closest approach to the pole, and within only ten 
minutes thereof, occurred about the year 2800 B.C." Upon 
the hypothesis of the & Draconis observation and epoch, 
taken in connection with the precessional displacement, the 
Great Pyramid was built 3400 B.C. ; but Lepsius puts it 
3500 B.C. ; the French Renan 4500 B.C. That learned 
man, Baron Bunsen, in his world-famous volumes of 
"Egypt's Place in Universal History," claims a duration of 
six thousand seven hundred years of a civilized, well-gov- 
erned, and prosperous Egypt, previous to their kings of the 
so-called Manetho's fourth dynasty. 

Dr. Rebold, a French archaeologist, treating of the Greek 
historians visiting Egypt in the fifth century B.C., makes 
the following observation : — 

"From the date 13300 B.C. until the year 4600 B.C., when the zodiac 
was constructed and set up in the temple of Esneh, there occurred 
four periods ; to the first is ascribed the reign of the gods, and to the 
last the consolidation of the lesser kingdoms into three large kingdoms, 
acting in concord with some thirty or forty colleges of the priests. . . . 
Hermes observing the star Aldebaran 3360 B.C., and writing upon 
astrology, and the certainty of immortality, said in dying, 'Until now I 
have been exiled from my true country, to which I am about to return. 
Shed no tears for me. I return to that celestial country whither all 
must repair in their turn. There is God. This life is but the death." 

It can not be supposed that the Egyptians suddenly built 
their walled cities, carved and ornamented their monuments, 
established picture-writing, — the language of the stars, — 
and constructed their pyramids upon the principles of 
science, with a standard measure for their cities and all the 
adjoining countries. Did it not take a long period to invent 
those tools, to construct machinery for raising such im- 
mense weights, to establish laws to govern workmen for 
general concert of action ? — and profound learning too, to 



284 AROUND THE WORLD. 

build with such, exactness upon principles geometrical and 
astronomical ? And yet what grand results ! Those pyra- 
mids are perpetual light-houses in the desert, speaking 
histories of once marvelous civilizations ; mighty monuments, 
serenely, proudly overlooking the fading ruins of nearly- 
forgotten ages. 

The learned Gliddon in his " Ancient Egypt " sensibly 
asks, — 

" Can the theologian derive no light from the pure primeval faith that 
glimmers from Egyptian heroglyphics, to illustrate the immortality of the 
soul ? Will not the historian deign to notice the prior origin of every 
art and science in Egypt, a thousand years before the Pelasgians studded 
the isles and capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples ? 
— long before Etruscan civilization had smiled under Italian skies? 
And shall nob the ethnographer, versed in Egyptian lore, proclaim the 
fact that the physiological, craniological, capillary, and cuticular dis- 
tinctions of the human race existed on the first distribution of mankind 
throughout the earth ? 

"Philologists, astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians, 
must return to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing ; of 
the calendar, and solar motion ; of the art of cutting granite with a cop- 
per chisel, and of giving elasticity to a copper sword ; of making glass 
with the variegated hues of the rainbow ; of moving single blocks of pol- 
ished syenite, nine hundred tons in weight, for any distance, by land and 
water; of building arches, round and pointed, with masonic precision 
unsurpassed at the present day, and antecedent by two thousand years 
to the ' Cloaca Magna ' of Pome ; of sculpturing a Doric column one 
thousand years before the Dorians are known in history ; of fresco paint- 
ing in imperishable colors ; of practical knowledge in anatomy ; and of 
time-defying pyramid building. 

" Every craftsman can behold, in Egyptian monuments, the progress ot 
his art four thousand years ago ; and whether it be a wheelwright build- 
ing a chariot, a shoemaker drawing his twine, a leather-cutter using 
the selfsame form of knife of old as is considered the best form now, 
a weaver throwing the same hand-shuttle, a whitesmith using that 
identical form of blowpipe but lately recognized to be the most effi- 
cient, the seal-engraver cutting, in hieroglyphics, such names as Shoop- 
ho's, above four thousand three hundred years ago, — all these, and many 
more astounding evidences of Egyptian priority, now require but a 
glance at the plates of. Posellini. " 



STUDY OF THE PYRAMIDS. 285 

When newspaper scribblers, when blatant talkers, pro- 
nounce Egypt of "little account," pronounce the pyramids 
"useless piles of stones, the largest covering four or five 
acres of sand," they will permit me to pleasantly express a 
pity for their egotism, and a scathing contempt for their 
ignorance. 

Evidences difficult to gainsay incline many to the belief 
that the oldest pyramids are nearer twenty than five thou- 
sand years old. That eminent Egyptologist, Bunsen, con- 
cedes to Egypt an antiquity of twenty thousand, and to 
China a larger period. 

HOW DID THE OLD EGYPTIANS MOVE SUCH MOUNTAINOUS 
MASSES OF STONE? 

In Sakkarah Catacombs, near the site of the present Mem- 
phian ruins, are beautifully polished granite slabs, consti- 
tuting the tombs of the kings, twelve feet in length, eight feet 
wide, and six feet high. Such sarcophagi are actually mam- 
moths. In them I could and did stand erect. And yet 
these are but playthings compared to some of the obelisks, 
granite needles, and pyramidal stones, characterizing the' 
Egypt of remotest antiquity. This one thing is certain: 
either the mechanism of ancient Egypt was vastly superior 
to ours, or these huge stones and pillars were manufactured 
where they now stand. 

" Pliny describes some of the arrangements connected with 
an obelisk a hundred and twenty feet high, erected at Alex- 
andria by Ptolemaeus Philadelphus. A canal was dug from 
the Nile to the place where the obelisk lay. Two boats were 
placed side by side, filled with pieces of stone having the 
aggregate weight of the obelisk. These pieces were in masses 
of one cubic foot each, so that the ratio between the quantity 
of matter in the obelisk, and that held by the boats, could 
be determined by a little calculation. The boats were laden 
to twice the weight of the obelisk, in order that they might 
pass under it, the two ends of the mighty monolith resting 



286 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

on the two banks of the canal. Then, as the pieces of stone 
were taken out one by one, the boats rose, until at last they 
supported the obelisk. They were finally towed down the 
canal, bearing their burden with them. So far, Pliny's 
account is clear; but he tells us little or nothing of the 
tremendous task, performed ages before, of originally trans- 
porting such masses from the Syene quarries to Thebes and 
Heliopolis. 

" An account is given by Herodotus of the transport of a 
large block of granite to form a monolith temple. The 
block measured thirty-two feet long, twenty-one feet wide, 
and twelve feet high ; its weight is estimated to have been 
not less than three hundred tons. The transport of this 
huge mass down the Nile, from Syene to the Delta, occupied 
two thousand men for three years." 

Several comparatively inferior Egyptian obelisks have 
been brought and reconstructed in Rome. The Luxor 
obelisk, borne from Egypt by the skillful M. Lebas, at an im- 
mense outlay of money and men, and put up in the Place de 
la Concorde, Paris, 1833, weighed less than two hundred and 
fifty tons. This is but a babe, compared to those remaining. 
There are single blocks, in that land of marvels, estimated 
by Glidden and others to weigh nine, and even twelve 
hundred tons. Tell us, engineers, tell us, O moderns, how 
they were removed, and placed in their present positions ! 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. — ASTRONOMY OF THE 

EGYPTIANS. 

The ancients swarming the Nile Valley seem to have 
excelled in astronomy, as well as in mechanics. Smythe, 
the astronomer royal of Scotland, sustains this position. 
Arid in a lecture delivered in Philadelphia by Prof. O. M. 
Mitchell, and reported for the press, he said, — 

" Not long since I met, in St. Louis, a man of great scientific attain- 
ments, who for forty years had been engaged in Egypt in deciphering 
the hieroglyphics of the ancients. This gentleman had stated to me that 
he had lately unraveled the inscriptions upon the coffin of a mummy 
now in the London Museum, and in which, by the aid of previous 
observations, he had discovered the key to all the astronomical knowl- 
edge of the Egyptians. The zodiac, with the exact positions of the 
planets, was delineated on this coffin ; and the date to which they pointed 
was the autumnal equinox in the year 1722 B.C., or nearly 3600 years 
ago. Accordingly I employed his assistants to ascertain the exact 
positions of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the 
equinox of that year (1722 B.C.), and sent him a correct diagram of 
them, without having communicated his object in so doing. In com- 
pliance with this, the calculations were made ; and to my astonishment, 
on comparing the result with the statements of his scientific friend 
already referred to, it was found that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C., 
the moon and planets had occupied the exact points in the heavens 
marked upon the coffin in the London Museum." 

HELIOPOLIS. 

What Oxford is to England, and Yale to New England, 
Heliopolis was to Egypt in the fifth century B.C. It is 



288 AROUND THE WORLD. 

only two hours and a half from Cairo by carriage. They 
tell me that in winter-time it is a very pleasant drive, 
over a splendid road bordered with orange, lemon, acacia, 
and olive trees. The gardens of ancient Heliopolis were 
famous, as the historian knows, for their balm-of-Gilead bal- 
sams. What think you, my countrymen, remains of this 
sacerdotal, this university city of antiquity, where Moses 
studied the "wisdom of the Egyptians," where Joseph's 
father-in-law officiated as a priest in the temple, where Plato 
the Grecian graduated, and where Herodotus, in his 
travels, sought counsel from the " wise men of Egypt " ? 
Its colleges, its magnificent temples, are but isolated mounds 
now ; and all that remains to determine the locality is a 
beautiful granite obelisk. This, fixing the site of the Tem- 
ple of the Sun, is thought by some Egyptologists to have 
been erected by the Pharaoh of Joseph's time, bearing the 
name of Osirtasen I., founder of the twelfth dynasty. 
When the geographer Strabo visited this grand old country, 
Egyptian scholars pointed out the residences of Eudoxus 
and Plato during the thirteen years they remained in Egypt 
under the searching tuition of the priests of Heliopolis. 
Though relentless time long since transformed Plato's Egyp- 
tian palace to dust, it has not effaced the hieroglyphics from 
Heliopolis's stately obelisk. 

The obelisk in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, which 
I visited several times while in Asiatic Turkey, is supposed 
to be the work of the fourth Thotmes. Those in Rome, 
brought from Egypt, bear inscriptions of various Pharaohs. 
But, of all the obelisks, the largest and most beautiful is that 
of Karnak, at Thebes, cut by Queen A-men-see, about 1760 
B.C. It is- a single towering shaft of the purest and most 
exquisitely polished syenite, in height about ninety feet, and 
in weight over four hundred tons. 

In hieroglyphical symbol-writing, Heliopolis means " the 
abode of the sun ; " and, as a celebrated seat of philosophy, 
its hierophants and seers professed to enlighten the world 






ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. 289 

After mentally and architecturally enriching other cities, 
the reputation of Heliopolis began to fade soon after the 
conquest of Egypt by Greece ; the Grecianized city of 
Alexandria taking its place. 

THE EOSETTA STONE, AND COPTS. 

When visiting London the first time, nothing interested 
me more than the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. 
Rosetta, in Arabic, Rasheed, is handsomely located on the 
west bank of the Nile, near its mouth. This modern town, 
founded by a caliph, 870 A.D., is built upon the site of 
some ancient city. Its present archaeological celebrity was 
acquired by the finding of the trilingual stone, known as 
the " Rosetta Stone," discovered by the French in 1799, 
while digging foundations for a fort. This invaluable tablet 
contained a decree made by the priests of Egypt in honor of 
Ptolemy Epiphanes, 196 B.C. It was written in hiero- 
glyphic, enchorial, and Greek. This gave the key to the 
Egyptian alphabet, the old Coptic, and to the reading of 
the hieroglyphical inscriptions. Copt is the language 
written on most of the monumental walls in Egypt. 

The Arabic is the vernacular of the country to-day, though 
there are many dialects spoken in the various parts of Egypt. 

The Coptic Church is the national church. Its arch- 
bishop of Alexandria, though residing in Cairo, is said to be 
the direct successor of Mark the Evangelist. So run these 
theological threads ; the Catholics looking to Peter, the 
English Church to Paul, the Coptic Church to Mark, and 
the Greek Church to the embodied wisdom of the apostolic 
fathers. The liturgy of the Copts is in the ancient Coptic. 
Their forms of worship resemble the Catholic ; but they 
utterly deny the authority of the Pope. 

None doubt the Copts, so numerous in Middle and Upper 
Egypt, being the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians. 
Their brown complexions, almond-shaped eyes, and heavy 
lips, resemble the face of the Sphinx, the ancient paintings, 



290 AROUND THE WORLD. 

and sculptured portraits ; and, further, they are slightly 
under the medium size, as are the exhumed mummies. 

ALEXANDRIA. 

In the palmy days of the Ptolemies this city numbered 
full half a million : it has to-day about one hundred and 
fifty thousand. Bating Pompey's Pillar and Cleopatra's 
Needle ; broken columns, cisterns, aqueducts, traces of walls, 
unexplored catacombs, porphyry, portions of Csesar's palace, 
fragments of statues, and library ashes, are all that remain of 
this ancient magnificent city, founded by Alexander the 
Great soon after the fall of Tyre, 333 B.C. Strabo gives 
a brilliant description of the streets, avenues, libraries, 
museums, obelisks, groves inclosing retreats for learned 
men, and temples of marble and porphyry that ultimately 
enriched Rome and Constantinople. 

The same architect, Dinocratus, who acquired such fame 
from planning the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, was 
employed by Alexander in the construction of Alexandria. 
Upon the death of this Macedonian monarch, he became 
governor of Egypt, and finally assumed the title of king 304 
B.C. Ptolemy Philadelphus, while adding much to the 
grandeur of the city, and increasing its libraries, built a 
marble tower, upon the summit of which a fire was kept 
continually burning as a direction to sailors. At this period, 
and long after, it was the great cosmopolitan seat of theo- 
logical controversy and moral philosophy. One links with 
it precious memories of Proclus, Plotinus, Ammonius, 
Saccas, the Alexandrian school, and its modifying influences 
upon Christianity. 

THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY, DESTROYED BY WHOM? 

This massive collection of literature was shelved in the 
Temple of Serajeion. Most of its rolls and scrolls were 
originally brought from India. Ptolemy Sotor has the 
honor of being its founder. Ptolemy Philadelphus enlarged 



ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. 291 

it. Others increased it to over seven hundred thousand 
volumes. To further add thereto, the following unique 
plan was devised : " Seize all books brought into Egypt by 
Assyrians, Greeks, and foreigners, and transcribe them, 
handing the transcriptions to the, owners, and putting the 
originals into the library." 

Book-burning is a business common to both ancients and 
moderns, Christians and Mohammedans. In an article on 
Alexandria, " The Encyclopaedia Britannica " says, — 

" This structure [alluding to the Serapeion] surpassed in beauty 
and magnificence all others in the world, except the Capitol at Some. 
Within the verge of this temple was the famous Alexandrian library, 
. . . containing no fewer than seven hundred thousand volumes. 

" In the war carried on by Julius Caesar against the inhabitants of the 
city, the library in the Brucheion, with all its contents, was reduced to 
ashes. The library in the Serapeion, however, still remained, and here 
Cleopatra deposited two hundred thousand volumes of the Pergamenean 
library. These, and others added from time to time, rendered the new 
library of Alexandria more numerous and considerable than the former; 
but, when the Temple of Serapis was demolished under the archiepiscopate of 
Theophilus, A. D. 389, the valuable library was pillaged or destroyed; and 
twenty years afterwards the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of 
every intelligent spectator." 

The blinded zealots of the agone ages strove to obliterate 
every vestige of that historic knowledge which distinguished 
the nations of antiquity. John Philaponus, a noted Peripa- 
tetic pnilosopher, being in Alexandria when the city was 
taken, and being permitted to converse with Amrou the 
Arabian general, solicited an inestimable gift at his hands, — 
the royal library. At first Amrou was inclined to grant 
the favor ; but upon writing the caliph, he received, it is 
said, the following answer, dictated by a spirit of unpardon- 
able fanaticism : " If those ancient manuscripts and writings 
of the Eastern nations and the Greeks agree with the Koran, 
or Book of Grod, they are useless, and need not be preserved , 
but, -if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be 
destroyed.'''' The torch was applied, and a wretched barbar- 



292 AROUND THE WORLD. 

ism was for the time triumphant. Sensations of sadness 
thrilled my being's core, while walking over ashes and 
ruins that were once ablaze with the literature of the East 
Never for a moment have I felt that " it was all for the 
best," the burning of the Alexandrian Library. 

Travelers visiting the present Alexandria naturally rush 
to see Cleopatra's Needle, a solid block of reddish granite, 
said to have been originally brought from Syene. This 
granite needle is sixty feet high, having to the top three 
columns of hieroglyphical inscriptions. Its twin column is 
buried in the sand near by. Not far distant is Pompey's 
Pillar, a single graceful column of pink granite, one hundred 
and fourteen feet high, and twenty-seven feet in circum- 
ference. During the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 14 to 37, these 
" obelisks were brought from Heliopolis to Alexandria." 
But how were they brought ? Ay, that's the question. It 
would be absolutely impossible for moderns to do it. The 
method is among the " lost arts." Was not this pyramidal 
stone estimated to weigh nine hundred tons ? were not these 
obelisks manufactured where they stand, historic opinion to 
the contrary ? 

Just at the dawn of, and after the initiation of the Chris- 
tian era, the history of Alexandria became singularly inter- 
mingled with that of Jerusalem, Greece, and Rome, in 
which the Ptolemies and Caesars, Philo Judseus, Pompey, 
Cleopatra, and St. Anthanasius, all play conspicuous parts. 
Here I am reminded of Gen. Lytle's lines referring to Caosar, 
Pompey, Antony, and Cleopatra : — 

"I am dying, Egypt, dying ! 

Ebbs'the crimson life-tide fast, 
And the dark Plutonian shadows 

Gather on the evening blast. 
Let thy arm, O queen ! support me, 

Hush thy sobs, and bow thine ear, 
Hearken to the great heart secrets, 

Thou, and thou alone, must hear. 



ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. 293 

Though my scarred and veteran legions 

Bear their eagles high no more, 
And my wrecked and scattered galleys 

Strew dark Actium's fatal shore, 
Though no shining guards surround me, 

Prompt to do their master's will, 
I must perish like a Roman, 

Die the great triumvir still. 

Let not Caesar's servile minions 

Mock the lion thus laid low. 
'T was no foeman's hand that slew him : 

'T was his own that struck the hlow. 
Here, then, pillowed on thy bosom, 

Ere his star fades quite away, 
He who, drunk with thy caresses, 

Madly flung a world away. 

Should the base plebeian rabble 

Dare assail my fame at Rome, 
Where the noble spouse, Octavia, 

Weeps within her widowed home, 
Seek her : say the gods have told me, — 

Altars, augurs, circling wings, — 
That her blood with mine commingled 

Yet shall mount the throne of kings. 

And for thee, star-eyed Egyptian, 

Glorious sorceress of the Nile, 
Light the path to Stygian horrors 

With the splendors of thy smile ; 
Give the Caesar crowns and arches ; 

Let his brow the laurel twine ; 
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs, 

Triumphing in love like thine. 

I am dying, Egypt, dying ! 

Hark 1 the insulting foeman's cry : 
They are coming : quick, my falchion ! 

Let me front them ere I die ! 
Ah ! no more amid the battle 

Shall my heart exulting swell. 
Isis and Osiris guard thee ! 

Cleopatra — Rome — farewell ! " 



294 AROUND THE WORLD. 

It is supposed that the two obelisks called Cleopatra's 
Needles once decorated the palaces of the Ptolemies. One 
of these has been presented to England by the Egyptian 
Government. It is questionable if decaying Britain has suf- 
ficient energy to transplant it upon her shores. 

When Amrou conquered Alexandria, he was so astonished 
at the magnificence of the city, that he wrote to the caliph, 
" I have taken the City of the West. It is of immense ex- 
tent : I can not describe to you how many houses it contains. 
There are four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, twelve 
thousand dealers in fresh oil, forty thousand Jews who pay 
tribute, and four hundred theaters, or places of amusement." 

Bidding Egypt, the Mizraim of the Hebrews, farewell, I 
have to say, O Egypt ! your reigning viceroy is an ambitious 
Mohammedan polygamist ; your government in its taxation is 
oppressive ; your slaver}' - is a blotch upon the face of the 
nineteenth century ; your religion is a gaudy show ; your 
people are terribly ignorant ; your guides are shameless liars ; 
your donkeys are hopelessly impenitent ; your " backsheesh " 
crying beggars are a disgrace to any country ; and your hun- 
gry fleas and flies more numerous, if possible, than they 
were in the times of the biblical patriarchs. On the other 
hand, those pyramidal Titans standing in somber majesty; 
those hieroglyphical records, defying the wear and waste of 
time ; that magnificent museum of antiquities upon the bank 
of the Nile ; those far-stretching groves of palm ; those 
broad fields of cotton, coffee, and rice, dotting the Nilotic 
valley ; those gardens of fruits and flowers ; those gorgeous 
sunsets of crimson and gold, translated into myriads of flash- 
ing jewels, to gradually melt away like Cleopatra's pearl 
into a sea of purple ; and those skies so clear and golden by 
day, so blue and delicately studded with constellations by 
night, reminding one of that city immortal with the twelve 
gates of pearl, as seen by John in vision, — these, all these, 
are to be set down to the sunny side of the Egypt of to-day. 





Mummy, Barneses II. 



ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. 295 

TALKERS. — EASTERN LIARS. — MARK TWAIN. 

These everlasting talkers, who run all to tongue, continu- 
ally put one in mind of a swinging sign on the hotel aban- 
doned. They are the Cheap-Johns of civic life. Sap 
drizzles and drops. Limber-lipped talkers talk what they 
know, and what they do not know ; talk what they imagine, 
what they suspect, what they infer, what they dream, what 
they have done, and what they intend to do, making them- 
selves the heroes of all tales told. Men like Alcott and 
Emerson, substantially great, are retiring and modest. Deep 
rivers roll silently. The lightnings are voiceless. God 
never speaks. Anything, then, but a talkative, self-conceited 
egotist, who, to put it alphabetically, shows off at A, spills 
out at B, slops over at C, runs sediments at D, and then 
repeats and re-repeats, commencing with the ego, and all — 
all this — to seem " smart ! " 

If David in his " haste " said, " All men are liars," I 
say it deliberately of all the " dragomen " and guides 
employed by us in the East. Many would both falsify and 
steal. Charity compels the opinion, however, that some of 
their misstatements were grounded in ignorance, rather than 
willfulness. Take this sample : Standing near the dome of 
the Grand Mosque in Benares, and surveying the city cir- 
cling the bend of the Ganges, we inquired of our guide the 
number of the population. " Six millions ! " was the prompt 
reply. " What ? " we doubtingly inquired. " Six — six mil- 
lions, sir ! " was the emphatic response. It was provokingly 
annoying. London, the largest city in the world, has less 
than three millions and a half. When looking up to the 
summit of Pompey's Pillar in Alexandria, Dr. Dunn inquired 
the hight. "Ten miles: he be ten miles high," was the 
ready answer. This Arab guide neither knew the real 
hight, nor the use of the English language. His professed 
guidance, therefore, was an imposition. 

Mark Twain does full justice to the "sheiks," to the 



296 AROUND THE WORLD. 

" dragomen," and to the beggars generally, of the Levant 
and the East. Generously admitting the genius of Twain 
in some directions, I nevertheless feel to say that, while wit, 
if original, is well ; while fiction has its place, and romance 
its legitimate use, — still truth and falsehood, sacredness and 
sacrilege, history and tradition, indiscriminately mixed, and 
bound between two covers with no lines of demarcation, 
reveal not only a silly conceit, but show a lack of solid lit- 
erary culture. Such " Innocents- Abroad " books of travel, 
read trustingly and believingly, lead the unwary strangely 
astray. True, their pages may excite interest : so do Gulli- 
ver's. They may produce laughter: so do clowns. And 
such volumes, too, may sell : so also does the Jack Sheppard 
style of novels. But is this the only object of book- 
making ? 

SPIRITUALISM IN THE EGYPT OP ANTIQUITY. 

The gods, the guardian angels of the ancient Egyptians, 
were once mortal men. Sanchonianthon, whom accredited 
historians place before the time of Moses, wrote in the 
Phoenician. Philo of Byblus translated a portion of his 
works into Greek. Here follow a few lines : — 

1 ' Egyptians and Phoenicians accounted those the greatest gods who 
had found out things most necessary and useful in life, and who had 
been benefactors when among mankind." 

Hermes Trismegistus acknowledged that the "gods of 
Egypt were the souls of dead men." And Plutarch informs 
us that the " Egyptian priests pointed out where the bodies 
of their gods lay buried." The eloquent Cicero wrote, — 

" The whole heaven is almost entirely filled with the 
human race : even the superior order of gods were originally 
natives of this lower world." And with these gods, angels, 
spirits, the Egyptians of remotest antiquity held constant 
converse. They also thoroughly understood psychological 



ANCIENT SCIENCE EST EGYPT. 297 

science. On their tombs, towers, and obelisks, are pictured 
mesmerists, in the act of pathetizing subjects. 

The papyrus of Sne-frau, predecessor of Cheops, abounds 
in the marvels of a gifted priestess. On a papyrus^ 
scroll from Thebes is a symbol of death ; and just over the 
mummied form is hovering the resurrected spirit, with eyes 
turned towards the scales of justice and truth. In the dis- 
tance are the expected mansions of rest. Several chapters 
in the ritual of the " Book of the Dead " treat of magic, 
trance, and magnetic healing. There are also pictorial illus- 
trations of the different magnetic states, and operators with 
upraised hands mesmerizing their subjects. Aural rays are 
seen streaming upon the patient's brain ; and consecrated 
priests stand by, holding in their right hands croziers, warding 
off the psychological influences of dark-hued, undeveloped 
spirits. The study and practice of Spiritism must have 
been common in the period of the pyramid-builders. The 
Hebrews obtained their knowledge of psychological science 
in Egypt. 

SPIRITUALISTS IN CAIRO. 

The Angel of Spiritualism has sounded the resurrection 
trumpet of a future existence in every land under heaven. 
Madame Blavatsky, assisted by other brave souls, formed a 
society of Spiritualists in Cairo about three years since. 
They have fine writing-mediums, and other forms of the 
manifestations. They hold weekly seances during the win- 
ter months. Madame Blavatsky went on later to Odessa, 
Russia. The lady whose husband keeps the Oriental Hotel 
is a firm Spiritualist. Fired with the missionary spirit, I left 
a package of pamphlets and tracts in her possession, for gratui- 
tous distribution. "And, as ye go, teach" was the ancient 
command. Madame Blavatsky, the irrepressible, several years 
subsequent became a Theosophist, writing huge volumes of 
wisdom, of sense, nonsense and undemonstrated theories 
heavily seasoned and spiced with ancient Hindoo mythology. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

FROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. — THE 
CITY OP JOPPA. 

Excellent steamers leave Alexandria three times a week 
for Jaffa, alias the Joppa of the New Testament. The pas- 
sage requires two or three days, stopping only at Port Said, 
the northern terminus of the Suez Canal. This city con- 
tains hardly seven thousand, — a motley gathering of all 
nations, the Arab element largely predominating. It has an 
artificial harbor, the huge blocks of which are manufactured 
of limestone, sand, and cement, and then transported to their 
position, forming a breakwater sufficiently substantial to 
insure the safety of ships. Unless money were the object, 
few would fix a residence in this sandy city. 

This is Sunday morning, six o'clock, Joppa — the 
Joppa of my Sunday-school dreams, with its domes, min- 
arets, palms, and suburban orange-gardens — loomed up in 
the distance like an amphitheatre from the ocean. To the 
right and left of the city only a sandy beach was visible. 
Joppa — a city of fifteen thousand, literally a " city set upon 
a hill," and the natural landing-place of Jews, Christian and 
Mohammedan pilgrims to Jerusalem — has a very insecure 
harbor. Remnants of an old Phcenician harbor are yet 
traceable ; but the precise spot where Jonah shipped for 
Tarshish, — probably Tarsus, — to " flee from the presence of 
the Lord," is not pointed out even by credulous monks. 
The clergy of the East, knowing the nature of the finny 



PROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. 299 

tribes that sport in the Mediterranean waters, consider it no 
heresy to doubt the whale-story of the Old Testament. 

It was at Joppa that the Lebanon timber from Hiram, 
king of Tyre, was landed for the building of both the 
temples at Jerusalem. It was here that the Tabitha whose 
name " by interpretation was Dorcas " lived, whom Peter, 
by his mediumistic powers, " raised to life," and where this 
apostle also had the remarkable vision recorded in the tenth 
chapter of Acts. The " Acts of the Apostles " should have 
been denominated the practices and spiritual experiences 
of the apostles. Tradition points to the very house where 
lived " Simon the tanner, by the seaside." Certainly we 
vdsited this spot, as do all pilgrims. The " seaside " is 
still there : further, " deponent saith not." Houses perish, 
but the good, never. Peter still remembers his vision. 

NEW-ENGLANDERS EST JOPPA. 

Considerable interest attached to Joppa, a few years since, 
from the attempted settlement there of some Maine and 
New-Hampshire " Church of Messiah " religionists, under the 
leadership of the Rev. G. H. Adams, well known in some 
of the New-England States. This colonizing movement 
proved, however, a complete failure. Adams — originally an 
actor, a Mormon, a pretender — became dissipated ; the col- 
onists lost their property; an officious consul (since dis- 
missed) took the fleece ; and the flock became scattered, only 
a few of the original settlers remaining in the country. The 
tract of land secured and taken up by these New-England 
enthusiasts is now owned principally by Germans. Some of 
these American settlers became so poor that they actually 
begged bread of the Arabs. Contributions sent to them were 
appropriated by Adams and his wife. Only twelve of the 
original one hundred and fifty-six that went to Joppa 
remain. Adams is in England ; and Mrs. Adams, the least 
respected of the two, is in California. The whole story is a 
sad one, the details of which will hereafter be given in full. 



300 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

But how can we longer tarry in Joppa, when Jerusalem, 
once the " city of the great king," is only thirty-five miles 
distant, and that over an excellent road, considering the 
mountainous nature of these Syrian lands ? 

IN JOPPA, BOUND FOB JERUSALEM. 

While yet in Cairo, Egypt, we unwisely engaged an Arab 
dragoman, at so much per day, to conduct us through Pales- 
tine ; unwisely, because better guides can be employed in 
Jaffa at the same price. Mr. Rolla Floyd, a very candid, 
competent American gentleman, and an energetic young 
man named Clark, both thoroughly acquainted with the 
whole country, will prove excellent guides. They are rem- 
nants of the Jaffa colony, and quite conversant with the 
Arabic and the Palestinian dialects. I am particular to note 
these facts, because, in the Egypt of to-day, famous for flies, 
fleas, and falsifiers, they are sure to tell travelers that no 
guides can be procured in Jaffa. Our Cairo guide — Ma- 
homet Selim — was a failure so far as intellectual guidance 
was concerned, yet a good and faithful " dragoman " in 
other matters. It is cheaper traveling in this than in the 
winter season. The dry and rainy seasons remind one of 
California. 

Selim, having secured his sheik, well-armed, his mule- 
teers, his horses, donkeys, and tents, we were off at ten 
o'clock on a sunny morning, horseback, for Jerusalem. Our 
horses were good ones. Passing through the bazaar, the 
narrow streets swarming with glittering raggedness, and 
the walls grayed with age, we emerged from this Oriental 
city buried in noble groves of orange-trees, out into the 
main thoroughfare, which was lined for some distance 
with irrigated gardens, lemon-orchards, and orange-groves. 
Suburban Jaffa is beautiful. The roadside, for a long way 
toward Ramleh, is fenced with cacti, and fringed with gar- 
dens. Residents tell us that these gardens in March and 
April are literally enchanting, the air being loaded with 



FROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. 301 

mingled fragrance of apricot and orange, lemon and quince, 
plum and china tree blossoms. During the dry season, last- 
ing from May till November, these gardens are kept fresh 
and green by irrigation. 

" In Eastern land they talk in flowers, 

And tell in a garland their loves and cares : 
Each blossom that blooms in their garden-bowers 
On its leaves a mystic language bears." 

But we are galloping away from garden and grove over 
vast plains, the biblical plains of Sharon. How flash upon 
the mind now the poetical phrases, " Carmel and Sharon," 
" the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley " ! Who are 
these ? " Pilgrims," says Seliin, " coming back from Jeru- 
salem and the Jordan." Some were Catholics, some Greek 
Christians, and others Mohammedans, all either riding camels, 
donkeys, or afoot, weary and dusty. Most of the traveling 
at this season is done in the night-time. Syrian, like Egyp- 
tian women, veil their faces. It is said that when the Sul- 
tan of Turkey was at Paris, in 1867, Louis Napoleon inquired 
of him, " Why don't you have roads in your country ? " 
adding, "The empress wishes much to visit Jerusalem." 
" There shall be a road within a year," was the Sultan's 
reply ; and so there was, a handsome carriage-road, twenty- 
five or thirty feet in width, the work of forced labor. 

Sharon has not, as Isaiah prophesied, become a " howling 
wilderness." Its extensive plains, rounding up now and 
then into swells and long ridges, are very fertile, judging 
from tne cultivated fields we passed, covered with corn and 
wheat stubble. Reapers and gleaners gather the harvests in 
June, or early in July. These plains, so eminently fertile, 
constantly reminded me of Sacramento and other rich valley - 
lands in California. 

On this route from Jaffa to Ramleh, three hours distant, 
there are several little villages in orchards of olives, figs, 
pomegranates, and mulberries. These mulberry-trees, like 



302 AROUND THE WORLD. 

those of Australia, are grown not for the silk-worm, but foi 
their fruit, the berries of which, while resembling the largest 
blackberries, have a sharper acid taste. From the mountains 
of Judea and Samaria to the sea, and from the foot of Car- 
mel to the more barren lands of Philistia, lie spread out 
the plains of Sharon, in spring-time like a flower-flecked 
island, beautiful as vast, and diversified as beautiful, fas- 
cinating the eye, and enchanting the imagination. It must 
have been paradisaic when Israel's king sang of Sharon's 
rose. 

RAMLEH. 

This old city, mostly in ruins, is said by Eusebius and 
St. Jerome to have been the Arimathea of Joseph, the 
Joseph into whose new tomb they put the body of Jesus. 
It was and is customary for Jews in distant localities to 
have tombs and burial-places in the immediate vicinity of 
Jerusalem, the holy city. This Ramlehan city of ancient 
buildings, cisterns, and subterranean vaults, has a grand old 
tower, believed by some to have been a minaret ; others 
think it originally the campanile of a magnificent church. 
That it has an Arabic inscription, bearing date A.H. 710, 
A.D. 1310, proves nothing, as there are similar vaunting 
inscriptions on castles and temples in Syria much older than 
the Mohammedan religion. Among the old stone houses of 
this city rises a palatial Latin convent, the monks entertain- 
ing travelers. The kindness of these celibate monks is pro- 
verbial. 

THROUGH THE JUDEAN COUNTRY. 

" We have turned us away from the fragrant East, 
For the desert sand and the arid waste." 

" Selim," our guide, announcing himself ready with 
horses watered, bridled, equipped, we are again snugly in 
the saddle under a scorching sun, on the way from Ramleh 
to Jerusalem. It is several miles yet across the plains of 



FROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. 303 

Sharon to the foot-hills that fringe the more mountainous 
regions. The landscape is diversified and beautified with 
olive-orchards, the leaves resembling those of the willow, 
only more soft and delicate. This is a common tree in the 
south of France, in Greece, and Syria. The Beautiful plain 
of Athens, as seen from Hymettus, appears almost covered 
with olive-trees. Olive-oil, quite an article of export in Syria 
and Asia Minor, is eaten with lettuce and other salads all 
through the East. The fruit is plucked by the hand, reduced 
to a pulp in the olive-mill, put into sacks of coarse linen, 
and subjected to a crushing pressure. This tree in portions 
of the Orient, like the oak in the West, is held in a sort of 
veneration. It was an olive-branch that the dove brought 
to the legendary ark ; while in Greece the wreaths that 
crowned the victors in the Olympic games were woven 
from the slender branches that tremble upon the leafy olive. 
The road winding, the country now wild and desolate, we 
gallop along quite reckless of the thought that this portion 
of Palestine, storied in song and trodden by apostles, had 
given birth to Jeremiah, witnessed the duel of David and 
Goliath, and the recorded standing-still of the sun on the 
plains of Ajalon. Passing old stone villages and rude 
tombs, we meet more pilgrims. It is nearly noon, a 
burning August noon, and the way begins to seem long to 
the " city of the great king." Through ravines and canons, 
how rugged the country, and barren too, save the orchards 
of figs and olives that dot the valleys, or terrace the hill- 
sides. What strange geological formations ! Giving our 
panting horses a little rest, we lunch to-day in an olive- 
grove, and have delicious prickly pears plucked fresh from a 
cactus hedge, and brought us by some sore-eyed Syrian 
girls, living a little distance from the wayside. " Selim," 
our dragoman, provides well, but the day seems long. Other 
hills and mountains are scaled, and Jerusalem is still before 
us. This is novel and odd-looking, surely. " What ? " 
Why, this summer threshing-floor in the open field, the 



304 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

grain being trampled out by the stamping of oxen. It ia 
decidedly primitive. The Egyptians have a similar method. 

Traversing these regions, one naturally asks, " How do 
the people live ? " Only in dreams could it have been called 
a land " flowing with milk and honey ; " and yet when irri- 
gated there are tasty oases, and numerous vineyards too, 
burdened with white and purpling clusters. Cities and vil- 
lages, built upon hillsides, frequently crown their summits 
Thus situated, these warlike inhabitants of Scripture records 
could better see the approaching enemy, and defend them- 
selves in battle. Terraced up toward the steep hilltops, 
many streets are on a range with the stone houses below. 
And then these tile-roofed buildings are generally flat. 
Some are handsomely grassed over. In several places we 
saw goats and cattle feeding upon the housetops. 

But see ! here's a restaurant ! Two men come out, 
American dressed. They speak English. One of them, 
originally connected with the American colonists to Jaffa, 
is now employed by the Palestine Exploration Society on 
the east side of the Jordan, in the land of Moab. These 
explorations are certainly confirming Jewish history. Our 
horses are weary and worn : so are their riders. The sun 
has now dipped his disk in the Mediterranean. 

GLIMPSES OF JERUSALEM. 

. There's not a cloud in sight. The skies are aflame with 
departing sun-rays, crimson and golden. Only " this hill to 
rise!" Ay, there — there it is ! the very Jerusalem OTer 
whif h " Jesus wept." Some poet sings, — 

' ' Jerusalem ! I would have seen 

Thy precipices steep ; 
The trees of palm that overhang 

Thy gorges dark and deep. 
Around thy hills the spirits throng 

Of all thy murdered seers; 
And voices that went up from it 

Are ringing in my ears." 



FROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. 305 

The fading light throws over the city a gray, somber, shad- 
owy appearance ; and yet you see around its entire circuit a 
lofty wall with beautiful parapets ; and within, white roofs, 
balustrades, domes, minarets, majestic churches, and the 
Mosque of Omar crowning Mount Moriah. Though situ- 
ated upon a mountain-top, Jerusalem is surrounded by still 
loftier mountains. It surprised us, however, that a city so 
historically famous should be so small. Pictures and Sun- 
day-school teachings had impressed us with the belief that 
it must be marvelously great, because built and adorned by 
King Solomon. Nevertheless it is large and rich in Semitic 
associations. Here Abraham dwelt. Here patriarchs and 
prophets had their pastures, their wells, their tents, their 
tombs, and their altars. Here Jesus performed many of his 
spiritual marvels. Here apostles sat at the feet of their 
divine Teacher. Here disciples learned the commandment, 
" Love ye one another." And here the tender, sweet-hearted 
John lovingly leaned upon Jesus' bosom, giving to all 
these hills and mountains an associate sacredness. Well 
might Whittier write, — 

" And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet, 
With dust on her forehead, and chains on her feet; 
For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone, 
And the holy shekinah is dark where it shone." 

OTHERS' IMPRESSIONS OP JERUSALEM. 

Lieut. Lynch, of the navy, approaching Jerusalem, 
writes, — 

" I rode to the summit of a hill on the left, and beheld the holy city. 
Men may say what they please ; but there are moments when the soul, 
casting aside the artificial trammels of the world, will assert its claim to 
a celestial origin, and regardless of time and place, of sneers and sar- 
casms, pay its tribute at the shrine of faith, and weep for the sufferings 
of its Founder." 

Prof. Osborne observes, — 

." Though weary from the day's ride in the saddle, and exhausted as 
were the pilgrims by the way, it was near night when we obtained the 



306 AROUND THE WORLD. 

first view of the city with its mcsques and towers. How unspeakably 
charming was that moment's vision! Never did silence and loneliness 
appear so gratifying." 

Believing as firmly in Jesus' suffering, bleeding, and 
dying a martyr to a principle, as in Socrates' draining the 
hemlock draught, the sight of Jerusalem had for me a thou- 
sand charms. 

"Here circling vines their leafy banners spread, 
And held their green shields o'er the pilgrim's head; 
At once repelling Syria's burning ray, 
And breathing freshness on the sultry day." 

To Strauss, Jesus was a wise rabbi; to Renan, a moral 
teacher; to Fourier, a warm-hearted socialist; to Fenelon, 
the most rapt of mystics ; to Paine, the most sincere of 
philanthropists ; to Miiller, the harmony of all history ; to 
Emerson, a true prophet seeing the mystery of the soul ; to 
Parker, a fellow-brother and self-sacrificing reformer ; while 
to me he was the marvel-working medium of the East, the 
baptized of Christ, and the great Syrian Spiritualist sent 
of the gods to bear " witness to the truth." Previously I 
had looked upon the Isle of Samos that gave birth to Py- 
thagoras; I had stood upon the spot where Socrates was 
imprisoned for corrupting the youth ; I had wandered over 
the fields of Sarnath, where Buddha's feet had pressed the 
soil ; I had traversed the land where Plato taught in the 
Athenian groves ; and now I was at the gates of the city 
where Jesus had toiled and taught, healed and suffered, 
wept, and died with the prayer upon his purpling lips, 
" Father, forgive them ! " The sainted John Pierpont 
sweetly wrote, — 

" A lonelier, lovelier path be mine; 
Greece and her charms I'd leave for Palestine; 
There purer streams through happier valleys flow, 
And sweeter flowers on holier mountains blow; 
I'd love to breathe where Gilead sheds her balm; 
I'd love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm; 



FROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. 307 

I'd love to wet my foot in Hermon's dews; 
I'd love the promptings of Isaiah's muse; 
In Carmel's holy grots I'd court repose, 
And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's blooming rose." 

This is Aug. 24. We enter Jerusalem by the Jaffa Gate ; 
and follow " Christian Street " to Mount Zion. 

JERUSALEM AS IT NOW IS. 

How often in life does sunshine fade away into cloudland, 
poetry into dullest prose ! So Jerusalem, which was so beau- 
tiful an hour ago in the softening, fading light of the setting 
sun, shrunk away to a trafficking Turkish city the moment we 
entered within the gates. The city has at present a popula- 
tion of some twelve thousand, of whom three thousand four 
hundred are denominated Christians, three thousand Jews, 
and five thousand Mohammedans ; each class largely occupy- 
ing separate quarters. The streets are narrow, dirty, and 
poorly paved. The houses, built of stone, look like for- 
tresses, presenting in front little more than blank walls. 
Morning and evening they are crowded with Turks and 
Arabs. The bazaars were sparsely supplied, with the 
exception of fruits. The principal trade of the city consists 
in beads and coins, crosses and relics. There are no gas- 
lights, as in Alexandria ; and therefore it was impossible to 
see much of the city in evening- time. Stopping at the 
Mediterranean Hotel on Mount Zion, kept by Mr. Hon- 
stein, — a Free-Mason and a free-thinker, — we had a 
delightful night's rest. Waking rested and refreshed, we 
could say most heartily, " Pray for the peace of Jerusalem ; 
they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy 
walls, and prosperity within thy palaces." 

OUR FIRST DAY IN THE CITY. 

Out in early morning upon the housetop I saw the sun 
rise from beyond the Jordan. After a delicious breakfast of 
sggs, bread, honey, and several kinds of fruit, we started, 



308 AROUND THE WORLD. 

with a guide, for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Front- 
ing it is a neatly paved square, reached from the street by 
descending a flight of worn stone stairs. This area is 
usually thronged with Syrians, Abyssinians, Armenians, 
Greeks, Copts, and Turks, as well as Europeans. Monks 
and tradesmen also frequent the place daily to sell amulets 
and cheap relics. The Holy Sepulcher is open to all reli- 
gionists except the Jews. These, with an intolerance unpar- 
donable, are excluded. There is little doubt but that the 
"new tomb " of Joseph of Arimathea was in this mountain- 
ous eminence. It was so designated in the first, and con- 
firmed by the fathers of later centuries. The magnificent 
dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher has been erected 
directly over this white-marble sarcophagus under which is 
the veritable rock-hewn " tomb." Near the sepulcher is a 
marble slab on which it is said they anointed the body of 
Jesus ; and to the east of it is a small door, requiring a stoop- 
ing posture to enter, made, in all probability, to harmonize 
with St. John's account, " And, as she wept, she stooped 
down, and looked into the sepulcher." About the tomb 
and the altar are gifts of precious stones, wreaths of pearls 
and diamonds, from the Christian sovereigns of Europe, and 
lamps of gold and silver kept continually burning. These, 
glittering with the smoke of the incense, the perfume of 
spices, and the attar of roses, induced in us a strange, weird 
sensation. Silently we said, " Jesus and the poor ; Jesus and 
the beggar by the wayside ; Jesus, once treading the wine- 
press alone, without ' where to lay his head,' now a god 
with a costly, garnished sepulcher, and the poor of the nine- 
teenth century begging, starving, dying ! " Jesus was gen- 
uine : Christianity is a sham. 

The crucifixion upon Calvary, the stone of anointing, 
the burial sepulcher, and other holy places, to say nothing 
of the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Coptic departments of 
worship, are all included under the roof of the Church of 
the Holy Sepulcher. Mount Calvary, within a stone's-throw 



FROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. 309 

of the sepulcher, is reached by climbing a flight of eighteen 
stone steps, introducing us into a richly decorated chapel. 
In this chapel is quite a rock with a hole therein, said to 
have received the foot of the cross ; and a tablet, showing 
where the " mother of Jesus stood " during her son's agony. 
Descending a rugged stone stairway, we entered the Chapel 
of St. Helena, mother of Constantine ; where, three hundred 
years after the crucifixion, it is pretended were found the 
" three crosses " in a state of perfect preservation. 

It is claimed that the Armenian Church covers the site 
where John was beheaded ; and close by they pointed us to 
Adam's grave, and a picture of his skull. They also showed 
where the cock stood and " crowed three times " before 
Peter's denial ; showed us the Judgment Hall ; the place 
where Jesus, leaning against the wall when weary, made an 
indentation in the rock ; the spot where he fell under the 
cross, calling upon Simon of Cyrene ; the place where they 
scourged him ; the cleft in the rock, made when he yielded 
up the ghost ; and, what is more, they identified the exact 
locality where the angel stood that appeared to the Maries. 
Further, they pointed to the tomb of Melchisedec, the pal- 
ace of Herod, the place where Stephen was stoned, the 
house of Dives, the dilapidated stone shanty of Lazarus, 
and the prints of Jesus' footsteps where he stood when 
confounding the " doctors of the law." 

Naturally incredulous, the fixing of these localities with 
such cool precision disgusted me. Tradition and supersti- 
tion are the handmaids of ignorance. The truth is, the 
most imaginative genius can not reconstruct Jerusalem as 
Jesus saw it, and Josephus and other Jewish writers describe 
it. The demon of war, crimsoning its streets, too often 
sacked the city. It has been burned, built, and rebuilt. 
The localities of towers and tombs, pools and sepulchers, 
therefore, are mostly hypothetical ; and yet the general topo- 
graphical outlines of the city and immediate country are 
as clearly marked as they are ineffaceable. 



310 AROUND THE WORLD. 

" THE WALL, AND THE GATES THEREOI ." 

The present wall, with its five gates, surrounding Jerusa- 
lem, is about two and a half miles in length ; and portions of 
it evidently occupy the line of the ancient first wall. Some 
fifteen feet thick, and from twenty-five to forty feet high 
according to the location of the ground, this wall has salient 
angles, square towers, battlements, and a breastwork run- 
ning around upon the top, furnishing a fine promenade foi 
tourists. Standing upon the topmost stones, and survey- 
ing the scenery, we were shown a horizontally projecting 
column upon which Mohammed is to " stand when he comes 
to judge the world." It was interesting to examine the 
excavations of Capt. Warren, who, commencing some fifty 
yards outside the walls, pushed a shaft under them, discov- 
ering the foundations of the old Temple, the pillars and 
arches of which are marvels. 

Visiting the gate that is called " Beautiful," and then 
passing out of St. Stephen's Gate, we descended the steep 
hillside to the vale of Kedron, just by the Valley of Jehosha- 
phat. No water flows along the bed of the Kedron, save 
during the rainy season. Previous to beginning the ascent 
of Mount Olives, we come to the garden of Gethsemane, a 
pleasant bit of level ground about fifty yards square, sur- 
rounded by a high wall, and containing, besides several old, 
scraggy olive-trees, some flowering shrubs, plants, and semi- 
tropical flowers, carefully cared for by Latin monks. Over 
this " Garden of Agony," Greek and Romish monks, fired 
with rivalry and jealousies, have not only wrangled, not only 
fought with their tongues, but they have several times 
actually come to blows and bloodshed. Turkish officials, in 
the name of the Allah of the prophet, were compelled to 
interfere. Behold how these Christians "love one an- 
other " ! 



FROM ALEXANDRIA TO JOPPA AND JERUSALEM. 311 
THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 

Though the stones were rough and rolling, the nirobleness 
of our Arab steeds made us feel safe while climbing up the 
steep hillsides of Mount Olives from the Garden of Geth- 
semane. Jesus and the apostles must have often left the 
passing imprints of their bare feet along this winding way. 
Upon the summit we had reached, is a miserable, dirty vil- 
lage, whose dark-hued inhabitants greatly resemble, both in 
dress and appearance, the Mussulmans of India. The women, 
sitting at the doors of their low stone houses, partially cov- 
ered their faces as we passed by ; and the children chased us, 
calling for money as a matter of right, rather than charity. 
Upon the top of this uneven mount, guides, showing the 
impress of a large foot legibly stamped upon the face of a 
stone, declare that the indentation was there made when 
" Jesus ascended to heaven." Saying nothing of the unnat- 
uralness of the imprint, the alleged ascension was not from 
Mount Olives, but from Bethany. Accordingly, the Evan- 
gelist Luke says, " Jesus led out his disciples as far as 
Bethany, and blessed them ; and, while he blessed them, he 
was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." 

" ' Peace I leave with you ! ' From days departed 
Floats down the blessing, simple and serene, 
Which to his followers, few and fearful-hearted, 
With yearning love, thus spake the Nazarene, — 
' Peace I leave with you ! ' " 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

CITY OP PROPHETS AND APOSTLES. — JESUS AND JERU- 
SALEM. 

" The panting pilgrim's heart is filled 
With holiest themes divine, 
When first he sees the lilies gild 
The fields of Palestine." 

Jerusalem, literally the city of peace, built and destroyed, 
buried and resurrected, was plundered by the Egyptian con- 
queror Shashak ; besieged and taken by Nebuchadnezzar, 
king of Babylon ; robbed by Syrian kings from the north ; 
subjected, with all Judea, to Roman rule 63 B.C. ; destroyed 
by Titus ; devastated by crusaders ; and savagely sacked by 
the Saracens in the seventh century. Standing on Mount 
Olives, perhaps near where John leaned upon Jesus' bosom, 
and reflecting upon the above historical events, while an 
Arab lad was gathering some olive-branches as evergreen 
symbols of the angel-song " Peace on earth," my thought 
flashed backward o'er the waste of nearly twenty centuries, 
to the occasion that called forth Jesus' plaintively tearful 
appeal to his kinsmen. As a psychometrist knowing the 
murderous persecutions of the past, and as a seer foreseeing 
the future of the city of the prophets, he wept, saying, — 

" O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! thou that killest the prophets, and stonest 
them which are- sent unto thee ! how often would I have gathered thy 
children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, 



CITY OF PROPHETS AND APOSTLES. 313 

and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I 
say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is 
he that cometh in the name of the Lord." 

As the summit of Olives is some three hundred feet highei 
than Jerusalem, the prospect, especially from the Bethany 
side, is magnificent. Eastward nearly twenty miles are the 
Jordan and the Dead Sea : the surface of the latter is said 
to be the lowest point of water upon the face of the globe, 
being one thousand three hundred and twelve feet lower 
than the Mediterranean Sea. 

Travelers accustomed to the wide distances of America 
are astonished to find how near together nestle the Pales- 
tinian cities, so famous in the Scriptures. Bethlehem is but 
six miles south from Jerusalem ; while Bethany, the place 
with which are associated many of the sweetest and tender- 
est memories of Jesus, is but two or three miles from the 
city. It was from Bethany, then embowered in olive and 
palm, acacia, fig, and pomegranate, that the Nazarene com- 
menced his triumphal march over the rising hills on which 
" much people that were come to the feast, when they heard 
that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm- 
trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna ! " 

Monks here show the cave-like grave from which Lazarus, 
who had fallen into a deep, unconscious trance having the 
appearance of death, was raised. Deep and damp, it was 
reached by several descending steps. Naturally skeptical 
touching " sacred spots," we did not care to enter. Here in 
Bethany lived Martha and Mary, whom Jesus so loved. 

" BUT DID JESTJS EXIST ? " 

It is too late in the day of historical erudition to raise such 
an inquiry. Intelligent spirits without exception, — so far 
as I am aware, — thinkers and savants in all countries, admit 
that Jesus lived and taught, was persecuted, and martyred 
upon Calvary. Gerald Massey, in commencing his lecture 



314 AROUND THE WORLD. 

upon the " Birth, Life, and Marvels of Jesus Christ," in Music 
Hall, Boston, Jan. 18, said, — 

" The question of the real personal existence of the Man is settled for 
me by the references to Jesus in the Talmud, where we learn that he was 
with his teacher, Rabbi Joshua, in Egypt, and that he wrote a MS. 
there which he brought into Palestine. This MS. was well known to 
the rabbis ; and I doubt not it contained the kernel of his teachings, 
fragments of which have floated down to us in the Gospels." 

Aaron Knight, one of my spirit teachers, assured me, sev- 
eral years since, that from conversing with the apostolic 
John, and other ancient spirits, he had learned that Jesus, 
between the years of twelve and thirty, visited Assyria, 
Egypt, and Persia, there studying spiritual science. In con- 
sonance with this, " The London Human Nature " of 1872 
(published by James Burns) has a picture (through the 
artistic mediumship of Mr. Duguid) of, and a communication 
from, the Persian spirit who on earth was the traveling com- 
panion of Jesus during his pilgrimage into Persia and India. 
The narration is thrillingly interesting. 

While in Jerusalem, we visited a learned and venerable 
rabbi, to ascertain what the Talmud said of Jesus. He 
kindly read and translated for us, and also loaned us for the 
day a portion of the translation. From this " Talmudic 
pile " we gathered the facts that the Mishna, or repetition of 
the law, relating to governments, laws, customs, and events, 
transpiring long before and after the Christian era, contained 
the opinions of one hundred and thirty learned rabbis. The 
compilation of this was finished in A. D. 190, and is consid- 
ered by the Jews in all Oriental lands as divine. Certain 
comments annexed to the Hebrew text of the Mishna con- 
stitute the work known as the " Jerusalem Talmud." But 
the Neziken of the Mishna in one of its seventy-four 
sections (Order IV. chap. 10) while treating of the Sanhe- 
drim, or great Senate and House of Judgment at Jerusalem, 
makes special mention of Jesus of Nazareth, — his "indif- 
ference to tlj.e law of Moses," his "pretended miracles," his 



XTY OF PEOPHETS AND APOSTLES. 315 

" stubborn waywardness," his " kingly ambition," and 
"repeated blasphemies." These testimonies are befitting 
addenda to " Jesus : Myth, Man, or God? " * 

THE MOSQUE OF OMAE. 

It is common for Arabian and Indian Mussulmans, after 
visiting Mecca, sacred to the birth of Mohammed, and Medina, 
holy because holding the ashes of Araby's apostle, to visit 
Jerusalem, praying in the Mosque of Omar. This famous 
edifice, as an architectural structure, is unique, massive, and 
eminently rich in consecrated antiquities. Its overshadow- 
jing dome, its porcelain, blue enamel, crimson canopies, elab- 
orately gilded texts from the Koran, and weird shrines of the 
patriarch, give the building a grand and imposing appear- 
ance. Mohammedans, ever hating Christian leather, require 
" infidels " from the West to enter their temples of worship 
with bared feet, or in slippers presented at the vestibule. 
But as workmen, last autumn, were repairing this mosque, 
— the crown of Mount Moriah, and original site of Solo- 
mon's Temple, — we were allowed to enter well shod ; when 
our guide, recounting the old and silly myth, pointed to the 
"stone," the rock of El Sahara, a large, irregular, limestone 
rock surrounded by an iron railing, and said to be "miracu- 
lously suspended." Passing by (without a thought) the load- 
stone suspension, this is declared to be the rock upon which 
Abraham sacrificed the " ram," the one that Jacob used for 
a " pillow," and the one, say Mussulmans, from which 
Mohammed made his miraculous flight to heaven upon his 
celestial steed Barak; and, as proof, they point to the 
marks of the horse's hoofs in the rock. 

This mosque has parted with much of its past splendor. 
Ibn Asakir saw it in the twelfth century. Then it was a 

* This volume referred to by Mr. Peebles, " Jesus: Myth, Man, or God ? " giv- 
ing the historical evidences of Jesus' existence, as well as drawing damaging 
comparisons between the results of sectarian Christianity, and the moial 
effects of the "heathen philosophy" so called, is for sale at the "Banner of 
Light" office. — Ed. Banner of Light. 



316 AROUND THE WORLD. 

building of beautiful proportions, having fifty doors, six 
hundred, marble pillars, fifteen domes, four minarets, and 
three hundred and eighty-five chains, sustaining five thou- 
sand lamps. Not until 1856 were Jews and Christians 
allowed to enter this mosque. Mohammedans believe that 
angels keep nightly watch about the lofty dome, bringing 
with them, to breathe, the air of Paradise. 

THE JEWS' W AILING-PLACE. 

Admitting, which seems reasonable, that the present 
western wall, and a portion of the northern wall circling Jeru- 
salem, occupy the very line of the ancient first wall, it is per- 
fectly natural that Eastern Jews should meet at the base 
of the wall upon the west side to weep and wail over 
stones there placed before Herod's time. Though there are 
some present each day, Friday is the great wailing-day. 
Assembled, — 

The rabbi begins, " On account of the Temple which 
has been destroyed, and the glory which has departed" — 

" We sit here and weep." 

" Because our prophets and holy men have been slain, 
because Jerusalem is a desolation, and because our Messiah 
long promised has not come " — 

" We sit here lonely weeping and praying.'''' 

Both sexes were present. The aged women, bowing, 
sighed and wept ; young maidens bathed the hallowed walls 
m their tears ; old men tottered up to the stones, prayers 
trembling on their lips ; while others wailed aloud as though 
their hearts would break. Seeing them made my soul sad. 
And oh ! how I wanted to tell them, Messiah has already 
come. Your Messiah, like the kingdom of God, is within 
you ; while the Christ-spirit has been coming during all the 
cycling ages ! This locality along the outer wall may well 
be termed " the Jews' wailing-place." 



CITY OF PROPHETS AND APOSTLES. 317 

IN HELL AS PROPHESIED. 

Leaving the close-communion Calvinistic craft while my 
cheeks were yet crimson, and hair flaxen, the clergyman, in a 
rage over my irrepressible infidelity, told me I would " go to 
hell." And it was true, — infinitely truer than his Sunday 
preaching, for I went, yes, went to hell ; and that, too, 
while seeking Jesus, or, rather, his footpaths round about 
Jerusalem. After passing for half an hour under a scorching 
sun along the brow of Mount Zion, dotted with here and 
there an olive-tree, I suddenly found myself in the Valley 
of Hinnom, Gehenna, Hell ; the place referred to in 
Mark ix. 45, 46, — 

" And, if thy foot offend thee, cut it off : it is better for thee to enter 
halt into life, than haying two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that 
never shall be quenched ; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is 
not quenched." 

This Valley of Hinnom, on the south-east side of Jerusa- 
lem, is nearly one mile and a half in length ; and in ancient 
times there was an image here standing dedicated to Moloch, 
to which idolatrous Jews offered human sacrifices, even 
their own children. After King Josiah had partially purged 
the land of idolatry, this valley became the common recep- 
tacle of rubbish from the city, and of the dead bodies of 
notorious criminals, upon which festering filth worms 
reveled. And to stifle the stench, and prevent pestilential 
diseases, a fire was there kept continually burning ; hence 
this place of fire, or hell-fire. The term Gehenna (Hell), 
composed of two Hebrew words, Gree, a valley, and Hinnom, 
the name of the man who once owned it, was used by Jesus 
figuratively to describe a state of deep, conscious misery. I 
do not agree with Theodore Parker that " Jesus taught the 
eternity of future punishment." The whole drift of his 
moral teachings and parables is against such a conclusion. 
True, he employed the phrase, " The fire that shall never be 



318 ABOUND THE WOBLD. 

quenched ;" but he used it in the limited sense of the Orien- 
tals. Strabo the geographer, treating of the Parthenon, 
a temple at Athens, says, " In this was the inextinguishable 
or unquenchable lamp," and yet this lamp was quenched 
ages since. Josephus, speaking of a festival of the Jews, 
writes, " Every one brought fuel for the fire of the altar, 
which continued always unquenchable ; " and yet the fire 
was long ago quenched, with altar and temple in ruins. So 
in this valley of Hinnom, — this Gehenna--Z7eZZ of the New 
Testament, — the grass in spring-time is green, and the 
flowers bloom ; olive and fig trees bear their fruit ; while 
near by bubbles the Pool of Siloam. Hell, theologians to the 
contrary, is more a condition than a locality. 

bethesda's pool and medicines. 

This Pool of Bethesda, literally the " house of mercy," 
pointed out as within the city, near St. Stephen's . Gate, is 
thus spiritually referred to in John's Gospel : — 

' ' Now, there is at Jerusalem by the sheep-market a pool, which is 
called, in the Hebrew tongue, Bethesda, having five porches. . . . 

" And an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and 
troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the 
water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. ' ' 

There are strange traditions connected with this pool. In 
Old-Testament times David, walking upon the housetop, 
saw the beautiful Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, bath- 
ing in Bethesda's limpid waters. And this "man after 
God's own heart," being touched with the infirmity of 
" affectional freedom," sent messengers, and " took her." 
The remainder of the story need not be told. This reservoir 
of sanative waters was "troubled," that is, magnetized by 
an angel, or band of spiritual presences, something as certaiD 
modern media will, by holding, so "trouble" a goblet of 
water that the color will change, and medicinal properties be 
imparted. The spirit-world is, in a measure, made up of the 



CITY OF PROPHETS AND APOSTLES. 319 

invisible essences of roots, plants, and minerals. Divine 
physicians know their uses. When the angels spiritually 
magnetized Bethesda's waters, the " blind, halt, and with- 
ered " stepped in, and were healed. Give intelligent spirits 
the conditions, and I dare set no bounds to their power. 
Intermittent springs, pools, and reservoirs, owing to earth- 
quakes and other frequent convulsions of nature in tropica., 
climates, often spasmodically rise and fall, and occasional!} 
for ever cease to flow. Septeiriber last, Bethesda was a dirty, 
sunken cesspool, with simply a show of shallow, turbid 
water. 

THE DATE OE THE CRUCIFIXION. 

A London critic has recently given Disraeli the Israelite, 
and present leader of the Tory party in Parliament, a ter- 
rible flagellation for the chronological blunder of putting 
the crucifixion in the reign of Augustus Caesar, when the 
event transpired in the twentieth year of the reign of 
the Emperor Tiberius, son-in-law and successor of Augustus 
Cffisar. Herr Kaib, the great German savant, in a lately 
published work, shows that 

" There was a total eclipse of the moon concomitantly with the earth- 
quake that occurred when Julius Caesar was assassinated on the 15th of 
March, B.C. He has also calculated the Jewish calendar to A. D. 41; 
and the result of his researches fully confirms the facts recorded by the 
Evangelists of the wonderful physical events that accompanied the cru- 
cifixion. Astronomical calculations prove, without a shadow of doubt, 
that on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan (April 6) there 
was a total eclipse of the sun, which was accompanied in all probabil- 
ity by the earthquake, ' when the veil of the temple was rent from the 
top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rock rent ' (Matt, 
xxxii. 51) ; while St. Luke describes the eclipse in these words : ' And 
it was the sixth hour (noon) ; and there was a darkness over all the land 
till the ninth hour (three o'clock p. m.), and the sun was darkened ' 
(Luke xxi. 44). 

" This mode of reckoning corresponds perfectly with the result of 
another calculation our author made by reckoning backward from the 
great total eclipse of April, 1818, allowing for the difference between 
the old and new style ; which also gives April 6 as the date of the new 



320 AROUND THE WORLD. 

moon in the year A. D. 31. As the vernal equinox of the year fell on 
March 25, and the Jews ate their Easter lamb, and celebrated their Frib 
Passoh, or feast of the passover, or. the following new moon, it is clear 
April 6 was identified with Nisar 14 of the Jewish calendar, which 
moreover was on Friday, the Paraskevee, or day of preparation for the 
sabbath ; and this agrees with the Hebrew Talmud. Thus by the 
united testimony of astronomy, archaeology, traditional and biblical his- 
tory, there can be but little doubt that the date of the crucifixion was 
April 6, A. D. 31." 

Jesus, the Syrian seer, a radical reformer and diyine 
teacher, died a martyr to the sublime principles he taught, — 
died with a prayer of forgiveness trembling upon his quiv 
ering lips. May we not say with the Revelator, " Worth) 
the Lamb " ? 

"THE STAR. OF BETHLEHEM." 

" The star in the east took its place in the choir ; 
While the seraphs sang alto, the angels sang air; 
They sang, and the cadence is lingering still, — 
' Be our peace evermore to the men of good will.' " 

As melody marries the words of a song, so truth marries 
the cycling ages. The priest officiating at the altar is his- 
tory, — the issue, wisdom. But was this Bethlehem star a 
new star? Was it a comet? Was it a transient meteor ? 
Was the brilliancy caused by planets in conjunction ? Was 
it an atmospheric luminosity ? Was it an angel assuming an 
astral appearance ? Or was it a sudden stellar eruption sim- 
ilar to that witnessed by Tycho Brahe in 1572, when a star 
appeared suddenly, and increased to such an astonishing 
magnitude that it was visible at noon, maintaining much of 
its splendor for seventeen months ? The French Academi- 
cian, Alphonse De Lamartine, said that — 

" Chinese astronomers, whose observations are noted for their accuracy, 
and extend back thousands of years, record that a bright comet did 
appear in the year 4 B.C., and remain visible seventy days during the 
vernal equinox. This is a curious fact, and it corroborates the assertion 
made by most chronologers, that the nativity occurred four years before 
the time usually assigned to it; so that we should now be in A. D. 1878, 
instead of 1874." 



CITY OF PROPHETS AND APOSTLES. 321 

Though accepting the fact of the star on that auspicious 
evening, we utterly repudiate the theories of both astrono- 
mers and miracle-believers. Those philosophers and astron- 
omers who saw the star were, according to Matthew, " wise 
men from the East," — Magi; and the term " Magi," from 
Mag in the Pehlvi language, implies a mystic, a visionist, a 
dreamer of dreams. Pliny and Ptolemy mentions Arabi as 
synonymous with Magi. Accordingly the more learned of 
the second century believed that the Magi who brought the 
offerings of "frankincense and myrrh" came from Southern 
Arabia, where these productions abound. But, whether they 
came from Arabia or Persia, those " wise men " were media 
gifted with clairvoyance ; and the star was a brilliant psy- 
chological presentation guiding them to the birthplace of 
him who, when mediumistically developed, spiritually edu- 
cated, and baptized of the Christ, " went about doing good." 

BETHLEHEM THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 

Biblical commentators to the contrary, it is of little con- 
sequence whether the Nazarene was born in a peasant's 
house, a cave, or a dismal grotto. Along the Nile in Egypt 
they build of mud, but in Syria of stone ; a limestone rock 
underlying, if not overtopping, most of the country. Beth- 
lehem, a city of six thousand inhabitants, built of stone, 
has many houses hewn in the rocks, cave-like. It stands 
upon a hill, the sides of which are terraced with vineyards. 
The suburbs are bleak and wild. As i whole, the city is 
more tidy and cleanly, however, than most of the Syrian 
villages. 

Reaching Bethlehem about noon, we hurried to the 
Church of the Nativity, said to have been constructed over 
the cave-stable in which Jesus was born. The edifice is 
shaped like a cross, and was erected A. D. 325 by the Em- 
press Helena. "We rested and lunched in the Latin convent. 
The monks were very kind, and their rooms cozy and quiet. 
These Franciscan monks entertain travelers free of charge, 



322 AROUND THE WORLD. . 

— a common practice in the East. At one o'clock we saw 
these monks feed a flock of poor children gratis. It was a 
beautiful sight ; and in our soul we said, Heaven bless these 
Roman- Catholic monks! The country surrounding Bethle- 
hem is full of interest. It was around these hills that the 
youthful David learned to make the lute and the harp. 
Here were the border-lands of Boaz ; here Ruth gleaned th 3 
barley-fields ; here was the wilderness of Judea, in which 
John preached repentance ; here were the plains where 
shepherds were abiding when they heard the angel-song of 
" Peace on earth; " and here, too, was born Jesus, the Shiloh 
of Israel, and the " Desire of all nations." 

When crossing these unfenced " shepherd hills," so called, 
said our spirit-friends, in Jesus' time, we noticed flocks feed- 
ing on a dry, hay-like substance, and shepherds watching 
them. Observing and meditating upon this, I thought of 
the hymn, — the fugue my mother used to sing in those sunny 
days of a New-England childhood, — 

" While shepherds watched their flocks by night, 
All seated on the ground, 
The angel of the Lord came down, 
And glory shone around." 

Oh the lingering melody of that mother's voice ! its tender 
echoes can never die away from my soul. Further reflec- 
tion brought to memory the sweet lines of our Quakei 

Whittier : — 

" Lo ! Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen, 
With the mountains around, and the valleys between ; 
There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there 
The song of the angels rose sweet in the air. 

I tread where the twelve in their wayfaring trod ; 
T stand where they stood with the chosen of God, — 
Where his blessings were heard, and his lessons were taught ; 
Where the blind were restored, and the healing was wrought. 



CITY OP PROPHETS AND APOSTLES. 323 

Oh, here with his flock the sad Wanderer came ! 

These hills he toiled over in grief are the same ; 

The founts where he drank by the wayside still flow ; 

And the same airs are blowing which breathed on his brew." 

WHY DID NOT CONTEMPORARY GREEKS AND ROMANS 
REFER TO JESUS ? 

This inquiry has little force. Why did not contemporary 
Hindoo historians choose to notice the presence of Alex- 
ander the Great in India ? Why do prominent European 
writers deny the existence of the Grecian Pythagoras; 
alleging, among other reasons, that the name is traceable to 
the Sanscrit Pitha-aura, the schoolmaster? Why did not 
Homer, the contemporary of Solomon, make mention of 
him or of the Hebrews ? Why do the writings of Thales, 
Solon, Democritus, Plato, Herodotus, Xenophon, and others, 
contain no references whatever to the Jews? Do such 
omissions prove the non-existence of patriarchs and proph- 
ets ? It should be remembered that those were not the eras 
of a world-wide toleration and appreciation, nor of special 
telegrams and morning newspapers. 

Saviors are fated to non-recognition by their fellows. 
Prophets have never had where to lay their heads. The 
proud and the erudite do not notice them. Thorns leave crim- 
son kisses upon their pale foreheads. Jesus " the Galilean " 
was of this number. Neither rabbi nor Roman helped him 
to "bear the cross." But Greek and Roman writers of 
the second century make direct mention of him and the 
" superstitious vagaries " of the Christians. Historians of 
the coming century may deign to make records of the 
present exponents of the Spiritual philosophy. 

SOLOMON'S POOLS. 

Those, by the winding road we went, are ten miles from 
Jerusalem. The place is called El Burak. The dilapidated 
old castle here standing was built upon Masonic principles. 



324 AROUND THE WORLD. 

The two pillars, the arch, the breastplate, the trowel, ami 
the star inclosed in the circle, are plainly visible. The con- 
struction of these three gigantic pools, or cisterns, is ascribed 
to Solomon. If he was not the builder, who was ? The 
one farthest east is six hundred feet in length, two hundred 
in width, and fifty feet deep. The proudest man-of-war 
that ever plowed the ocean might float thereon. The fi:*st 
of these pools is fed from a living fountain. During the 
rainy season the upper pool, overflowing, fills the others. 
The water from these immense reservoirs, carried through 
an underground aqueduct around the hills a little to the 
east of Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and used originally in the 
various services of the sanctuary, is at present used by 
the Mohammedans about the Mosque of Omar, who bathe 
their hands and faces before worshiping. 

FROM JERUSALEM TO THE JORDAN. 

Rising early from a good night's rest upon Mount Zion,. 
breakfasting upon eggs, bread, grapes, figs, and honey, — 
minus the locusts, — and finding our sheik, and guide Selim, 
well armed, the muleteers and tenting apparatus in readi- 
ness, we were speedily in the saddle, wending our way 
through the vale of Kedron, by the tomb of Zechariah, the 
tomb of St. James, and the battered tomb of Absalom, 
which to this day, when the Jew, passing, especially upon 
a funeral occasion, picks up and hurls a stone thereat, 
exclaiming, " Cursed be the son who disobeys the father's 
commands ! " The hills in this vicinity are literally honey- 
combed with graves and old tombs. 

Reaching a rugged eminence a little distance from the 
city, Mr. Knight, a spirit-friend, spoke to Dr. Dunn's clair- 
audient ear, saying, " Along that valley to the right, Jesus 
and his disciples used to come into the city from Bethlehem ; 
. . . and farther, on that palm-crowned hill, lived a warm 
personal friend of Jesus, with whom he frequently tarried 
over night." Spirits of the apostolic age, accompanying 



CITY OF PROPHETS AND APOSTLES. 325 

directed us to such localities as were yet magnetically aflame 
with ancient marvels. Not a spoken word of Jesus was 
lost ; not a touch dies away into nothingness ; the universe 
knows no annihilation. To this, psychometry is a living 
witness. While Mr. Knight was conversing with us, this 
passage flashed upon my mind like a sunbeam : — 

" Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us by the 
way, and while he opened to us the scriptures ? " (Luke xxiv. 32.) 

MAE, SABA AND THE DEAD SEA. 

Journeying Jordan-ward, we met crowds, with their 
heavily-laden donkeys and camels, on their way to Jerusa- 
lem. The morrow was market-day. Syrian women still 
bear burdens upon their heads. Late in the afternoon we 
•came to our tenting-place in a grassless, shrubless valley, 
rimmed around with sharply-defined hills. Near us was 
Mar Saba, a weird convent castle. No pen-picture can do 
justice to this Oriental edifice, with adjoining gorges, per- 
pendicular cliffs, and rock-hewn chambers, where monks 
nightly mouth their midnight prayers. Within this half- 
martial, half-churchal structure are not only numerous small 
chapels, covered with old pictures and Greek inscriptions, 
but St. Saba's sepulcher, and a vault filled with fourteen 
thousand skulls of martyred monks. 

The country is indescribably rough, ragged, and moun- 
tainous ; the results of terrible convulsions are everywhere 
visible. Repairing to our tent-apartment from Mar Saba, 
just at dark, an Arab lad, nearly naked, brought us speci- 
mens of bituminous rock ; it seemed filled with a species of 
petroleum. These dark, dismal, pitchy cliffs, with the bitu- 
men, sulphur, niter, and phosphoric stones found in all this 
region, account for the plains of fire, or the destruction of 
the "five cities of the plain," — Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, 
Zeboim, and Zoar, — upon purely natural principles. Hav- 
ing seen burning JEtna, stood upon sulphurous Vesuvius, 
walked upon Solfatara's cooled yet tremulous crater, as well 



326 AROUND THE WORLD. , 

as utterly extinct volcanoes in different countries, I discover 
no satisfactory evidences that the Dead Sea was once the 
crater of an extinct volcano : rather should I consider it 
originally a fresh-water lake. But, reflecting upon the mill- 
ions of years that have rolled into the abysmal past since 
the beginning of earth's mighty geological upheavings, who 
dare define conditions, or fix bounds to ancient rivers, seas 
or oceans ? Immutable law governs all things. Explorers, 
as well as roaming Arabs, tell us that along the southern 
extremity of the Dead Sea are several bubbling hot springs. 

Notwithstanding the nasal music, the multitude of fleas, 
and the doleful shriek of night-birds, we slept comfortably 
well in our tottering tent, guarded by sheiks and their 
heavily-armed attendants. 

Tuesday morning, Aug. 26, four o'clock found us approach- 
ing the Dead Sea upon the north, near the entrance of 
the Jordan. It was yet starlight. Never did the stars- 
appear so brilliant. We felt the presence of spirits. It is 
cool and comfortable traveling at this hour, even in half- 
tropical Palestine. Riding our jaded horses to another 
frowning summit, we caught a full view of this memorable 
sea. Its crystal waves, lying tremulously at our feet, were 
bathed in the sun, now rising gorgeously over the brown 
hills of Moab. The Dead Sea, resembling externally a beau- 
tiful American lake, is some seventy miles in length, and 
from three to twenty in width. Its waters presenting a sil 
very, transparent appearance, are a little bitter, and salt even 
beyond the ocean. They act something like alum in the 
mouth, and cayenne in the eye. Birds sail over its blue 
depths ; while rank shrubbery, graceful reeds, and flowering 
plants, grow down to the very sands upon the brink. If 
there are no abrasions upon the skin, bathing in the Dead 
Sea is exquisitely delicious. Owing to. its great specific 
gravity, twelve hundred, — distilled water being one thou- 
sand, — effort to remain upon the surface is needless, sink- 
ing impossible. Coming out from our swimming excursion- 



CITY OF PEOPHETS AND APOSTLES. 327 

in these clear yet bitter, briny waters, there was a saline 
crystallization upon the beard, and an irritable, uncomfort- 
able feeling upon the cuticle, till, galloping away over the 
plains six miles, we bathed in the soft, rippling waters of 
the Jordan. 

" On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, 
And cast a wistful eye " 

to America, — the noblest, grandest country in the world. 

" Breathes there the man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said, — 

' This is my own, my native land ' ? 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
As home his footsteps he hath turned 
From wandering on a foreign strand ? " 

What changes in this country since the time of the apos- 
tles ! There's now a railway from Joppa to Jerusalem, 
owned mostly by the French. Its speed is fifteen miles per 
hour. It is but three hours from Joppa, now called Jaffa, to 
the once city of King David. Thirty years ago there was 
not a wheeled vehicle in Palestine. Jerusalem has one good 
hotel — " The New Hotel." Within the walls of the city 
are nearly 50,000, and about 28,000 of these are Jews. 
These are rapidly increasing in number. Soon the cry may 
be realized " Jerusalem for the Jews ! " 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

PRESENT GOSPELS. 

All countries have had their inspired chieftains, all dispen- 
sations their prophets, and all recurring cycles their apostles. 
Many evangelists besides those of the New Testament have 
written gospels, — good messages of peace, love, and " good 
will to men." 

It is perfectly natural that R6nan, while traveling in Pal- 
estine, should exclaim, " I have before my eyes a fifth Gospel, 
mutilated, but still legible." 

Though the Ganges is sacred to the Hindoo, the Nile to 
the Egyptian, and the Jordan to the Christian, the liberal 
and the more intelligent of this century, rising above the 
special into the beautiful border-lands of the universal, see 
in every flowing stream a Jordan, in every sunny vale a 
Kedron, in every day a sabbath day, in every soul a tem- 
ple for prayer, in every tomb a forthcoming Savior, in 
every healthy country a Mount of Transfiguration, and 
in every heart an altar of religious devotion, where the 
incense of aspiration is, or should be, kept continually burning. 

WHY JESUS WAS BAPTIZED IN THE JORDAN. 

All the Oriental religions had their regenerating rites. 
Egyptians were washed from their iniquities in the Nile. 
Upon sarcophagi and hieroglyphical scrolls Osiris is :epre- 
sented pouring water upon candidates in a kneeling position. 
The Avesta ceremonials of the Persians abound in directions 



PBESENT GOSPELS. 399 

for baptismal ceremonies. Even proud Romans practiced the 
rite ; and accordingly Juvenal criticised and satirized them 
for seeking to wash away their sins by " dipping their heads 
thrice in the flowing Tiber." Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, born 
subject to the law of Moses, must needs be circumcised and 
baptized for the washing-away of sin according to the Israel- 
itish understanding of ordinances in that era. But if Jesus 
was not consciously imperfect, was not a sinner, why 
should he submit to baptism by water ? Matthew says, 
" Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the 
region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in 
Jordan, confessing their sins ; " while Mark assures us that 
" John preached the baptism of repentance for the remission 
of sins." And John baptized Jesus in the Jordan. There- 
fore, as baptism was understood to be the " washing-away 
of sin," it is clear that Jesus was considered a sinner. Noth- 
ing upon theological grounds could be more absurd than the 
baptism of a saint ! 

Jesus, conscious of his imperfections, said, " Call not 
thou me good." The New Testament further declares that 
Jesus " learned obedience by the things he suffered," that he 
was " made perfect through suffering," and that he was 
called the " first begotten from the dead; " but how begot- 
ten from the dead unless himself once dead in trespasses and 
sins ? 

After Jesus confessed, and was baptized, — the water being 
a symbol of purification, — the " heavens were opened," and 
the Christ-spirit from the heaven of the Christ-angels 
descended upon him, and a voice came saying, " This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Now we have 
Jesus Christ "our exemplar," Jesus Christ standing upon 
the basis of eternal principles, Jesus Christ the anointed and 
illumined, ministering the tenderest sympathy and love. 
Those parables are inimitable ; the Sermon upon the Mount 
stands out unparalleled ; while that pleading prayer upon 
the cross, breathing forgiveness toward murderers, proves the 
Nazarene divine. 



330 AROUND THE WORLD. 

JORDAN'S SOURCE AND SCENERY. 

The Jordan of the Evangelists, originating at the base of 
snowy Hermon, passes through the Galilean lake ; through 
a rich valley-strip of land southward some two hundred 
miles ; through shaded banks of willow, sycamore, and such 
reeds as were shaken by the wind when the mediumistic 
John there stood baptizing Him who afterwards baptized 
with the Christ-spirit; and finally falls quite precipitously 
into those crystal depths of brine and bitumen, the Dead 
Sea. Though vineyards, balsam-gardens, and palm-forests 
have disappeared ; though the climate is bleaker, and the 
face of the country considerably altered, — still this saline sea, 
with river and mountain, sufficiently mark these Meccas of 
biblical history. 

Easily fording the Jordan, we should call it in America an 
ordinary stream, nothing more. Tasting, I found the water 
soft, of an agreeable flavor, and great limpidity. Drinking 
freely, it wanted but one quality, — coolness. After quench- 
ing our thirst, cutting canes, gathering specimens, wading, 
bathing, and splashing in the waters, we lunched in the 
cooling shadows of rose-laurels and junipers, probably the 
same species of juniper as that under which Elijah sat 
when the angel came, and touched him (1 Kings xix. 4). 

WHAT SPIRITS SAID OF JORDAN AND JERICHO. 

Accompanying us in this wild region were exalted spirits 
vvho lived in the Nazarenean period, — royal souls then, 
angels now. These assured us that, during the past twenty 
centuries, rightly denominated a cycle, terrific convulsions 
had left their footprints upon the face of all that country 
known as Assyria. The Jordan itself is a much smaller 
stream now than then. Anciently it had two series of banks, 
one of which was annually overflowed from the molting of 
Hermon's and Lebanon's snows with the heavy ra 4 ns of the 
winter season. The channel, deepening, especially near the 



PRESENT GOSPELS. 331 

Dead Sea, has also changed its course. This the old bottom- 
land gravel-beds abundantly demonstrate. Portions of these 
flat lands have at the present time an exceedingly rich soil ; 
and it only requires industry, irrigation, and cultivation to 
make the plains of the Lower Jordan fruitful as the orange- 
gardens of Sharon. 

Dr. Thomson, after thoroughly exploring the whole Judean 
country, says : — 

" Thus treated, and subjected to the science and the modern mechan- 
ical appliances in agriculture, the valley of the Jordan could sustain 
half a million of inhabitants. Cotton, rice, sugar-cane, indigo, and 
nearly every other valuable product for the use of man, would flourish 
most luxuriantly. There were, in fact, sugar-plantations here long 
before America was discovered ; and it is quite possible that this plant 
was taken from this very spot to Tripoli, and thence to Spain by the 
crusaders, from whence it was carried to the West Indies. Those edi- 
fices to the west of 'Ain es Sultan are the remains of ancient sugar- 
mills, and are still called Towahin es Sukkar." 

Near sundown, pitching our tent Aug. 27, adjoining 
Rihi, a village of squalid Arabs, we sat down for journal- 
writing and reflection. • Squads of curious Arabs continually 
prowled about our camp. These Bedouin-tenting denizens of 
the desert are coarse, rough, and often high-handed robbers. 
Many shades darker than the same class on the mountains, 
they subsist largely upon plunder, as do gypsies in some 
portions of the East. 

JERICHO AND THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

Early rising is both commendable and healthy. The 
morning of Aug. 28, five o'clock, found us in the saddle 
approaching Jericho, anciently called the city of palm-trees : 
but the last palm, that a generation since stood by the old 
tower, a solitary sentinel, fell at last, and not a vestige 
of the date-palm now appears in the vicinity. Riding ovei 
lines of ancient walls, feet-worn pavements, mounds, fallen 
aqueducts and arches, bits of brick, and moldering piles, a 



332 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

feeling of sadness brooded over my entire being. . Is it pos- 
sible that this was the magnificent Jericho of antiquity ? — 
the Old-Testament Jericho, whose walls fell before those 
echoing ram's-horn blasts sounded by seven mediumistic 
priests ; the Jericho that many times saw the weary Naza- 
rene on his way from the Jordan up to Jerusalem ; the 
Jericho that takes in the great fountain of 'Ain es Sultan, 
and so famous in religious memory as connected with the 
parable of the " Good Samaritan," and the lesson of univer- 
sal brotherhood? Is this teaching practiced by either Spirit- 
ualists or se^ jarists ? Is there simplicity, confidence, purity, 
peace, and brotherhood in the ranks of fashionable Chris- 
tians ? Why, Christianity has become the synonym of pride, 
fashion, plunder, persecution, and war ! When the blood of 
seventy thousand Mohammedans by the hands of crusading 
Christians had crimsoned the streets of Jerusalem, the 
prayerful murderers, in the name of religion, went and kissed 
the cold stone that covered the tomb of him termed " The 
Prince of peace ! " Hate of Christian priests for philoso- 
phers kept the Roman Emperor Julian with the old Pagan 
religions. " Ere I leave the worship of the gods," said he, 
" let me see a better state of society emanating from Chris 
tian teachings." 

RETURNING TO JERUSALEM. 

Our spirit-friend Mr. Knight — referring, as we passed 
along, to Jesus' aptitudes at teaching from nature, and then 
commenting upon the sheep and the goats, the barren fig- 
tree, the lilies of the field, and other Nazarenean illustrations 
— said that twenty centuries had wrought marvelous changes 
upon the face of Palestine. Volcanic countries were ever 
liable to sudden commotions. The topographical, climatic, 
and electric conditions were all considerably different. Some- 
thing like two thousand years constituted a cycle ; and a 
cycle had passed since the later Hebrew seers and poets, 
standing upon the mount of vision, foretold the desolation 



PRESENT GOSPELS. 333 

that should come. The causes were then in operation. All 
prophecy, however, is within the realm of causation. 

Poetically speaking, Syria was once a land flowing with 
milk and honey. Its undulating valleys rejoiced in waving 
fields of corn ; its crystal streams were bordered with palms 
and roses ; its mountains were covered with olives, figs, mul- 
berries, pomegranates, and clustering vines ; and its rocky 
cliffs with grazing flocks and herds. 

The present population of Palestine, estimated at two 
hundred thousand, is scattered over mountains dotted with 
mingled masses of rocks and ruins. It seems impossible that 
this country, now under the sultan's rule, once sustained 
three millions of prosperous people. And yet it is evident 
that there have been great natural and desolating convulsions 
since the days of Hillel, Philo, Josephus, and Jesus. Agri- 
cultural pursuits were abandoned for war, denuding moun- 
tains of their woody vestures, and hills of their figs, olives, 
and grazing herds. Shortly after the crucifixion, the country 
was wasted by famine, cursed by civil dissensions and foreign 
wars instigated by ambition and a merciless cupidity. 

But we are again approaching the city so holy to Jews, 
Christians, and Mohammedans, — ,the seventeen times be- 
sieged, rebuilt, and re-ruined Jerusalem, which to-day is little 
more than a gathering of rival bishops, ecclesiastics, monks v 
artisans, and traders, selling relics, and supplying the tem- 
poral wants of religious pilgrims, who thither flock to see the 
magnificent sepulcher and costly shrines dedicated to an 
inspired reformer, — a reformer who, when on earth, was con- 
sidered by arrogant Pharisees as a wandering, sabbath-break- 
ing, blaspheming, false "prophet of Galilee." Draining the 
cup of sorrow, drinking to the dregs the chalice of agony, 
he sadly said, " Tho foxes have holes, and the birds of the 
air have nests ; but the Son of man hath not where to lav 
his head." 



334 AROUND THE WORLD. 



EXPLORING PALESTINE. 



Why not, in a broad cosmopolitan spirit, explore Palestine, 
Tyre, Troy, and the once peopled isles of the ocean ? 

In 1848 Lieut. Lynch was duly authorized by our Gov- 
ernment to go down the Jordan from Galilee, through the 
windings of that river to the Dead Sea. Capt. Warren's 
excavations in Jerusalem, and discoveries relating to ancient 
localities, entrances to Solomon's Temple, subterranean pas- 
sages, winding aqueducts, wells, tanks, canals cut in solid 
rock, pottery, weights, seals, gems, and inscriptions in the 
Phoenician characters, and historical sites mentioned by Jose- 
phus, are exceedingly valuable to archseologists. 

Prof. Palmer of Cambridge, and Mr. Drake, have recently 
explored the country lying between the peninsula of Sinai 
and Palestine, — desert of the Exodus, — in which the " Isra- 
elites wandered forty years." The country was covered 
with a brown, parched herbage. The route was interesting 
from the discovery of ruins, mounds, fortresses, and locali- 
ties retaining the names they had in the days of David. 

The American Steever's Expedition reached Beirut in 
1873. Mr. Paine there discovered important Greek inscrip- 
tions. In March they went to Edom and Moab. Here was 
found the celebrated Moabite stone, shedding more light upon 
the invention of our alphabet than any thing yet discovered. 
The learned Dr. Deutsh said, " It illustrates to a hitherto 
unheard-of degree the origin and history of the art of 
alphabetic and syllabic writing as we possess that priceless 
inheritance." The purpose of this company is to determine 
traditionary places, discover inscriptions, secure relics, and 
make an accurate map of this whole Syrian country. Be- 
sides the usual surveys, they also take astronomical observa- 
tions. They have already discovered the famous Mount Nebo 
and Mount Pisgah. Those who have read " The Book of 
Moab " will be deeply interested to know what they say 
about Zoa of Pentapolis memory. It is to be hoped that 



PRESENT GOSPELS. 335 

this expedition, considering the growing demands of science, 
will not be used in the furtherance of sectarian interests. 
When will our American Congress furnish funds to equip 
expeditions to unearth the treasures hidden in the mounds 
of the south-west, to penetrate the non-explored ruins of 
Yucatan, and the dust-buried temples of Peru ? 

NON-PRACTICABILITY OF REFORMERS. 

Apollonius, the rival of the Nazarene, was a mediumistic 
"mendicant;" Cleanthes was a "vagrant;" Jesus "im- 
practicable." These are the frisky judgments of pert, mole- 
eyed men. Seen from the slough of selfishness, and 
measured by a miser's standard, Jesus was decidedly 
impracticable. Listen : " Lay not up for yourselves treasures 
on earth." " When thou makest a dinner or supper, call not 
thy friends, thy brethren, thy kinsmen, nor rich neighbors 
to the feast, but call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the 
blind." Nothing to a vain externalist could be more 
unnatural, nothing more egregiously impracticable to fashion- 
able, Pharisaic worldlings. 

The beautiful hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, from which 
Paul quoted this to the Athenians, "For we are also his 
offspring,'''' will live on the page of poesy for ever. And yet 
poor, kind-hearted Cleanthes, who gratuitously taught philos- 
ophy and religion, was, upon the complaint of an envious 
and pompous Greek, brought before the tribunal of 
Arcophagus, and charged with having no visible means of 
support. Shadow-days have their compensations : justice 
is ultimately done. The moral teachings of Jesus, and 
Cleanthes' hymn, are in literature immortal ; while the 
names and memories of their persecutors are rotting to 
nothingness in a resurrectionless oblivion. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE CHRISTIANITY OE THE AGES. — PLATO AND JESUS IN 

CONTRAST. 

The Grecian Plato was the prince of philosophers ; the 
Syrian Jesus, of inspired religionists. What a vivid contrast 
of birth, education, and country, these celebrated chieftains 
present to the rational thinker ! Plato was well born, his 
mother .a descendant of Solon. Among his ancestors were 
several erudite and wise Athenians. 

His birth occurred in the palmiest period of the most 
distinguished country of antiquity. His education was the 
best that Athens could afford. Neither body nor mind was 
neglected. Muscle, imagination, taste, and reason were 
equally cultivated. While yet a youth he became a disciple 
of Socrates, meeting the most brilliant spirits of the age. 
That splendid yet extravagant genius, Alcibiades, the solid, 
clear-headed Xenophon, the keen, sophistical Protagoras, 
the logical and philosophical Crito, and other eminent 
scholars and statesmen, could but educe all that was divinest 
in man. The very air of classic Athens seemed to breathe 
the genius of art, science, and poetry ; while the wit of 
Aristophanes, and the tragedy of Euripides, moved the 
masses as do the winds the forest-trees. Then Plato 
traveled, studying under Euclid at Megara, under Theodorus 
at Cyrene, under the Pythagoreans at Tarentum, and under 
the Hierophants and Egyptian priests twelve years at 
Heliopolis. He ate but once a day, or, if the second time, 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE AGES. 337 

very sparingly, abstaining from animal food. He maintained 
great equanimity of spirit, and lived a celibate life. Return- 
ing to his native country, laden with the intellectual riches 
of the East, he opened an academy at Athens, in the 
Gardens of Colonus, where he lived in contact with the 
greatest men of the period, and died at a ripe old age, 
leaving a school of thinkers and orators to perpetuate his 
philosophy. Clad now in the shining vestures of immortality, 
he walks a royal soul in the republic of the gods. 

Jesus was born a peasant. Mary was good and pure- 
minded. Joseph was a country carpenter. Judea, geo- 
graphically insignificant, and numerically small, was at this 
time in a condition of political and religious decadence. 
The whole land had nothing to inspire faith. Its shekinah 
was eclipsed, its prophets dumb, and its very memories like 
the embalmed mummies of Mizraim. An alien race sat 
upon the Syrian throne. A Roman official presided in the 
judgment-hall. Roman soldiers paraded the streets, Roman 
officers levied and collected the taxes, and Roman coins 
circulated in the markets. The Jews at this period were 
narrow, selfish, proud. Hatred of Gentiles was a virtue ; 
help for suffering foreigners, little better than a crime. 
Religion was a form ; fasts fashionable ; and a broad cosmo- 
politan charity unknown. 

Jesus lacked early culture. John and James were 
scholars. Though uneducated in dialectics and the classics, 
Jesus was nevertheless clairvoyant, clairauclient, and mar- 
velously intuitional. Accompanied by a legion of heavenly 
angels, he stood above human laws, a law unto himself, 
unique, emotional, incomparable. The schools of the rabbis 
being but conservatories of traditions, Jesus, inspired by his 
spirit-guides, traveled in foreign countries, Egypt, Assyria, 
Persia, studying the mysteries of the seers, and listening to 
the voices of ascended gods. He sat at the feet of religious 
mystics, Magi, and gymnosophists ; Plato, at the feet of 
orators and logicians. Jesus, whose daily psalm was love, 



338 AROUND THE WORLD. 

whose touch was a blessing, and presence a benediction, 
cultivated the sympathetic, the self-denying, the religious 
faculties; but Plato the perceptive and the philosophical. 
Centuries have rolled into the abysmal past. Now millions 
march under the banner of the cross, made memorable by 
the martyrdom of that religious enthusiast and radical 
Palestinian reformer. The once thorn-crowned Jesus Christ 
is now companioned with those celestial angels, the presence 
of which make radiant the kingdom of God. The pre- 
eminent greatness of Jesus consisted in his fine harmonial 
organization ; in a constant overshadowing of angelic 
influences ; in the depth of his spirituality and love ; in the 
keenness of his moral perceptions ; in the expansiveness and 
warmth of his sympathies ; in his unshadowed sincerity of 
heart ; in his deep schooling into the spiritual gifts of 
Essenian circles and Egyptian mysteries ; in his soul- 
pervading spirit of obedience to the mandates of right 
manifest in himself ; in his unwearied, self -forgetting, self- 
sacrificing devotion to the welfare of universal humanity, 
and his perfect trust in God. 

CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS CHRIST. 

The patriarch Abraham, when returning from the 
" slaughter of the kings," convicted of the sin of war, met 
Melchisedec, King of Salem, priest of the most high God, 
and received his blessing. Abraham, conscious of the 
superiority of this so-considered " heathen " King of Salem, 
King of Peace, paid tithes, giving him at once " a tenth of 
all." But " who was Melchisedec ? " Why, he was the 
king of some contiguous nation, the peace-king of Salem, 
the baptized of Christ ; in a word, a Christian. This Christ- 
spirit, or Christ-principle, is truly " without father or mother, 
without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end 
of life, a continually abiding priest." 

There were Christians in those pre-historic periods, 
Christians in golden ages past, Christians long before the 



THE CHEISTIANITY OF THE AGES. 339 

Old Testament patriarchs traversed the plains of Shinar,. 
and Christians who spoke the ancient and mellifluous Sanscrit. 
Many of the most genuine and self-sacrificing Christians on. 
earth to-day are Brahmans and Buddhists. All great souls, 
under whatever skies, and in whatever period of antiquity,, 
baptized by the Christ-spirit of peace, purity, and love, and 
illumined by the divine reason, were Christians. 
Dean Milman admits that 

" If "we were to glean from the later Jewish writings, from the beauti- 
ful aphorisms of other Oriental nations which we can not fairly trace to 
Christian sources, and from the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, their 
more striking precepts, we might find, perhaps, a counterpart to almost 
all the moral sayings of Jesus." * 

Bigandet, the Roman Catholic bishop of Ramatha, and 
apostolic vicar of Ava and Pegu, says, — 

" There are many moral precepts equally commanded, and enforced 
in common, by both the Buddhist and Christian creeds. It will not be 
deemed rash to assert that most of the moral truths prescribed by the 
gospel are to be met with in the Buddhistic Scriptures. ... In reading 
the particulars of the life of the last Buddha, Guatama, it is impossible 
not to feel reminded of many circumstances relating to our Saviour's 
life, such as it has been sketched out by the Evangelists."! 

St. Augustine, treating of the origin of Christianity, 
affirms that — 

" The thing itself, which is now called the Christian religion, really 
was known to the ancients, nor was wanting at any time from the 
beginning of the human race, until the time when Christ came in the 
flesh; from whence the true religion, which had previously existed, began 
to be called Christian ; and this in our day is called the Christian religion, 
not as having been wanting in former times, but having in latter times 
received its name." 



* Dean Milxnan, Hist. Christianity, B. 1. <,. iv. § 3. 
t Bigandet, Life of Buddha, p. 494> 



340 AROUND THE WORLD. 

The Emperior Hadrian, writing to Servianus, while visit 
ing Alexandria, and referring to the religion of the old 
Egyptians, assures us that — 

" The worshipers of Serapis are also Christians; for I find that the 
priests devoted to him call themselves the bishops of Christ." 

Clemens Alexandrinus, so eminent in the early Church, 
admitted that — 

" Those who lived according to the true Logos were really Christians, 
though they have been thought to be atheists, as Socrates and Heraclitus 
among the Greeks." 

The Rev. Dr. Cumming of London, in his discourse upon 

the " Citizens of the New Jerusalem," says, — 

" It is a mistake to suppose that Christianity began only eighteen 
hundred years ago: it began nearly six thousand years ago: it was 
preached amid the wrecks of Eden." 

The Rev. Dr. Peabody (Unitarian) pertinently asks, — 

" If the truths of Christianity are intuitive and self-evident, how is it 
that they formed no part of anv man's consciousness till the advent of 
Christ?" 

The learned Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, whom I had 
met several times both in London and Calcutta, said in a 
discourse just previous to leaving England for India, — 

"The Hindoo, therefore, who believes in God, is a Christian. If 
purity, truth, and self-denial are Christian virtues, then Christianity is 
everywhere where these virtues are to be found, without regard to 
whether the possessors are called Christians, Hindoos, or Mohammedans. 
Hence it comes that many Hindoos are far better Christians than many 
who call themselves so. The result of my visit is, I came as a Hindoo, 
I return a confirmed Hindoo. I have not accepted one doctrine which 
did not previously exist in my mind. " 

This rational position lifts the Christianity of the ages out 
of the slough of sect, out of the realm of the partial, and 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE AGES. 341 

places it upon the basic foundation of the universal. Seen 
from this sublime altitude, all true Spiritualists are Chris- 
tians, recognizing the evangelist's affirmation, that " Christ 
had a glory with the Father before the world was ; " and, 
furthermore, that " Christ is the chief among ten thousand, 
and the one altogether lovely." 

THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITS ISLANDS. 

The sapphire waves of the Mediterranean, rippling under 
cloudless skies in star-lit hours, lift the thoughts to the 
" isles of the blest." A shade deeper than the sky, the 
islands that stud these waters called to mind early readings 
of the East. 

Rhodes, — " Laudabant alii claram Rhodon," as Horace 
sings, the sunny Rhodes of which Pliny records that the 
Rhodians never lived a day without seeing the sun ; and Scio, 
that may have been the birthplace of Homer as well as any 
other of the nine cities that contend for the honor, — t hese, 
and other isles, gladdened my vision. 

In Cyprus, held by Egyptians and Iranians before the 
time of Greece, excavators have recently discovered a colos- 
sal statue of Hercules, holding before him a lion. It was 
found at the old town of Amathus, said to have been colon- 
ized by the Phoenicians. 

We anchored off Syra, a beautiful isle, set in a sea smooth 
and green as polished malachite. Here was born Pherecydes, 
one of the oldest Greek writers. 

Rhodes will remain ever connected with the Knights of 
St. John, and the Colossus, one of the seven wonders of the 
world. Overthrown by an earthquake, it remained where it 
fell for over nine hundred years ; ultimately it was cut up 
for old metal, and borne away by the Mohammedans. Its 
size was doubtless greatly exaggerated by Greek visitors. 
This island has much to interest antiquarians. Syracuse, 
founded in 734 by the Corinthians under Archias, upon the 
ruins of an ancient Phoenician settlement, is all aglow with 



342 AROUND THE WORLD. • 

classical memories. It was the most extensive of the 
Hellenic cities. Strabo states that it was twenty-one miles 
in circumference. Connected with its history were such men 
as ^Eschylus, Pindar, Epicharnius, Thrasybulus, Dionysius, 
Demosthenes, and Archimedes, slain by a soldier who did 
not know his value either as mathematician or philosopher. 

The modern Greeks, peopling these islands, have the rep- 
utation of being the worst exaggerators on earth. They 
are generally tall, having fine complexions, sharp noses, and 
still sharper eyes. Their perceptive are much larger than 
their reflective brain-organs. Like the Jews, and not very 
unlike Americans, money is their god. On deck are 
a few Nubians, dark as night ; Syrians, with Jewish visages ; 
several Cretans ; one Arab trader, tall, thin, and withered ; 
and two or three Armenians, who are more European in 
their characteristics. The strange garments of these people 
are more diversified than their complexions. To a travel- 
ing pilgrim, how frail and fickle seem fashions ! Who 
are those that summer and winter under the fez, the turban, 
or pointed hood, under those flowing trousers, embroidered 
vests, red sashes, and multiformed cloaks, sacks, and robes ? 
What are their aspirations and life employments ? These 
are the practical questions that throng the mind. They are 
brothers of Oriental lands, brothers with the same beat- 
ing, pulsing hearts as ours, and destined to the same immor- 
tality. 

SMYRNA. 

' ' And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write. These things 
Kaith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive: 

I know thy works, and tribulation and poverty. . . . 

Behold, the Devil shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried. 

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: but be thou faithful 
unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. — John the Revelator. 

Smyrna, golden with the memories of early Christian 
teachings, sits to-day like a queen upon the border-lands of 
the Orient. 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE AGES. 343 

Our entrance into the broad, beautiful bay was just 
before sunset. The city lies at the very extremity, and 
partly upon the hill-side to the right, as you approach the 
shore. The site of ancient, historic Smyrna was on the 
left, at the foot of the mountains, and some little distance 
from the modern. Earthquakes have effected serious changes 
in much of the topography of this country. The Mediter- 
ranean at this and other points is continually receding. 

Excepting Constantinople, Smyrna is the most important 
commercial city in the Turkish Empire. Though sending 
large quantities of opium yearly to the United States, most 
of its export trade is carried on with Great Britain, consist- 
ing of cotton, carpets, wool, fruits, and opium. This latter 
article is raised extensively in the back country, and brought 
in upon camels for exportation, after inspection. How, in 
what way, is so much of it used in America ? 

Passing the Greek church, a modern structure, the Arme- 
nian houses, and a drove of burdened camels, to the sub- 
urbs of the city, I commenced ascending the hill towards 
the old castle, accompanied by a dragoman. It was nearly 
noon when I reached the tomb of Polycarp, the ancient 
Smyrnian bishop, the good Christian martyr, the acquaint- 
ance and fervent admirer of the Apostle John. This tomb,, 
held semi-sacred by both Mohammedans and Christians, 
overlooks the one hundred and fifty thousand souls that 
constitute the present city of Smyrna. 

Every thing in this country — cloths, fruits, potatoes, vin- 
egar, firewood — is bought and sold by the pound. The figs 
and grapes oj. Smyrna are famous for size, quality, and abun- 
dance. It seemingly adds to the exquisite flavor of olives, 
oranges, and figs, to pluck them fresh from the trees. This 
I was privileged to do in several fields and gardens in 
Smyrna and the Grecian Isles. Doubtless the best figs 
aever see America. 

There are a number of prominent Spiritualists in Smyrna* 
Among the most active are C. Constant and M. E. H. Rossi 



344 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Calling at Mr. Constant's palatial residence, in front of 
which is a beautiful garden fringed with fig, lemon, and 
orange trees, we were, after taking our seat upon a most 
inviting divan, treated to a cup of Turkish coffee, fruits, and 
delicious preserves. This is the Oriental custom. Every- 
where in the East, hospitality is as profuse as commendable. 
The Smyrnian bazaars, though much inferior, are very 
similar to those in Constantinople. One Turkish city typi- 
fies all others, — dirt, filth, decay, narrow streets, and a 
mixed population. How sad that such a profusion of fruit- 
age, that such a clear atmosphere and sunny sky, should 
Look down upon so much stagnant, dozing shiftlessness ! 
When Americans have peopled the prairies and the broad 
millions of the Far West, they may safely turn their eyes 
towards Asia Minor, and the over-estimated desert-lands of 
the Orient. 

CLIMATE AND COSTUMES. 

The Smyrnians, like multitudes in the East, seem to live 
out of doors. The warm climate invites to a free and easy 
life. They eat but little meat, subsisting almost entirely 
upon vegetables and fruits. Dining at the hospitable home 
of Consul Smithers, there came upon the table, after soup, 
fish, and other courses, seedless sultana raisins, different 
varieties of nuts, grapes, pomegranates, figs, apricots, and 
delicious oranges. Asia Minor is certainly the paradise of 
fruits. The variety of costumes renders a walk in the streets 
exceedingly interesting. With the national Greek or Alba- 
nian, the costume consists of a high fez, with a long blue 
tassel, red jacket with open sleeves, and richly embroidered ; 
shirt with wide and flowing sleeves ; a leathern belt, with 
a pouch ; short pantaloons and white fustanella. The Turk- 
ish costume is somewhat similar, only they wear short, 
wide trousers, dark-colored jackets, and shoes with buckles. 
The fez is almost universal. The old style of turban is seen 
only engraved upon tombstones, or worn on the heads of 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE AGES. 345 

old men in the back country. Some of the young Turks 
wear the French style of hats. The Persians wear tall, pyr- 
amidal-shaped turbans ; and all wind sashes around their 
waists. Strangers generally engage a " cavasse," — that is, 
a sort of Turkish guide, having a certain police power. 
Going back into the country, these are necessary, as there 
are Greek brigands lurking in the mountains. The " ca- 
vasse," clothed in full authority, doffs a tall Turkish fez, 
sack-legged trousers, mock jewelry, flowing mantle lined 
with fur, a belt with three pistols, several knives and 
dirks, and a sword dangling by his side. One far away from 
the city is in doubt which to most fear, — the guide, or the 
mountain brigands. Nothing, for a time, more attracted my 
attention off in the country from Smyrna, than the camels, 
— patient, faithful creatures! Sometimes there were hun- 
dreds in a train, each following the other, led by a lazy 
Turk astride a donkey, and all heavily burdened with cotton, 
madder-root, olive-oil in goat-skins, opium, figs, and other 
products from the interior. The caravans farther east are 
more extensive, and exceedingly profitable in their line of 
traffic. 

EPHESUS, AND THE APOSTLE JOHN. 

" Unto the angel of the ctnirch of Ephesus write, These things 
saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in 
the midst of the seven golden candlesticks : 

" I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou 
canst not bear them which are evil : and how thou hast tried them which 
say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars. 

" Thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. . . . 

" To the angel of the church in Thyatira write, ... I have a few 
things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which 
calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants. . . . 

" Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, 
and he shall go no more out : and I will write upon him the name of my 
God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, 
which cometh down out of heaven from God : and I will write upon him 
my new name. 

" And I will give him the morning star." — John the Revel atob 



346 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

Sailing up the Mediterranean I saw Samos, — literally 
44 sea-shore height." This island, at an early period of his- 
tory, was a powerful member of the Ionic Confederacy. 
Pythagoras left it, to travel in foreign countries, under the 
government of Poly crates. A future view of this classic 
isle from St. Paul's prison and Mount Prion, around which 
was grouped ancient Ephesus, famed as the seat of the most 
eminent of the old Asian churches, was very fine. Not far 
distant was the beautiful island of Cos, with its mountainous 
peaks, vine-clad hillsides, and pleasant-appearing homes, 
embowered in evergreen foliage. And there peered above 
the horizon Patmos, sainted Patmos, seat of John's visions 
and revelations. Banished from the world's bustle, and fre- 
quently in the a spirit on the Lord's Day," he became the 
recipient of truths and illuminations that streamed in glory 
down through all the sunrise hours of the Christian dispen- 
sation. . 

Determined to see the ruins of this old Ionian city, Ephe- 
sus, once noted for its commercial prosperity, for its stadium, 
theaters, and Temple of Diana, as well as for the place 
where the Apostle John spent his last years, I left Smyrna 
Nov. 7, 1870.* It was sixty miles distant to Isaalouke, a 
disagreeable Arab town. 

The English own this railway. An hour's ride on 
wretched horses dropped us down with a party of pilgrims 
to the rim of the Ephesian ruins. The original city was 
evidently built around the base of Mount Prion. Crumb- 
ling remnants of custom-house and ware-houses are yet 
visible. But the Mediterranean waters have so receded, that 
bay, harbor, and landing have given place to a broad basin 
covered with grasses and weeds, through which winds a 
small serpentine stream. The employees of J. T. Wood 
were putting down shafts between Prion and St. John's 

* Descriptions in this volume relating to Smyrna, Ephesus, Constantino- 
ple, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum, &c, are taken from notes made 
luring a previous visit to Europe, Turkey, and Asia Minor. 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE AGES. 347 

Church, in search of Diana's Temple, which was in process 
of completion when Alexander passed into Asia, 335 B.C. 
This temple was erected to succeed the one set on fire the 
night of Alexander's birth, 356 B.C. The labors of Mr. 
Wood were crowned with success ; and portions of those 
magnificent columns may now be seen in the British Muse- 
um, with the gods and goddesses of that period, beautifully 
modeled and chiseled. 

THE APOSTLE'S BURIAL-PLACE. 

A pilgrim under a scorching Asian sky, resting, I leaned 
upon one of the pillars that Christian and Moslem tradition 
unite in declaring marks the Apostle John's tomb. It was a 
consecrated hour. While standing by his tomb, on the 
verge of Mount Prion, looking down upon the marbled 
seats of the Ephesian theater, — relic of Hellenic glory, — 
with my feet pressing the soil that once pillowed the mortal 
remains of the " disciple that Jesus loved," ere their removal 
to Rome, no painter could transfix to canvas, no poet con- 
ceive suitable words to express, my soul's deep emotions. 
The inspiration was .from the upper kingdoms of holiness ; 
the baptism was from heaven ; the robe was woven by the 
white fingers of immortals ; while on the golden scroll was 
inscribed, ' The first cycle is ending : the ivinnoiving angels are 
already in the heavens. Earth has no secrets. What of thy 
stewardship? Who is ready to be revealed? Who, ivho shall 
abide this second coming ? Who has overcome ? Who is enti- 
tled to the mystical name and the white stone ? Grird on thine 
armor anew, and teach in trumpet tones that the pure in heart, 
the pure in spirit only, can feast upon the saving fruitage that 
burdens the tree of Paradise" 

From the summit of Mount Prion, the Isle of Samos 
may be distinctly seen. Gazing at this in the distance, 
and nearer to the winding course of the little Cayster 
towards the sea, at the scattered remnants of temples, mar- 
ble fragments, broken friezes, and relics of every description, 



348 AROUND THE WORLD. 

I could not help recalling the prophetic warning of John, in 
the Book of Revelation, " I will come unto thee quickly, and 
will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou 
repent" (Rev. ii. 5). 

It is generally admitted that the Apostle John lived to 
one hundred and four years of age; and all we know of his 
later days is linked with Ephesus, — accurately described 
by Herodotus, Pausanius, Pliny, and others, — outside the 
records of the Church fathers. It is not known how long 
St. John resided in this portion of Asia : suffice it, that his 
memory still lingers here, enshrined even in the Turkish 
name of the squalid village about two miles from the ruins 
of the old Ephesian city, " Ayasolouke" which is a corrup- 
tion of the Greek " Agios Theologos" the holy theologian, the 
name universally given to this apostle in the Oriental 
Church. 

The mosque here, which is magnificent, even though in 
partial ruin, was undoubtedly an ancient Christian church, 
probably the identical one which the Emperor Justinian 
built on the site of an older and smaller one, dedicated in 
honor of St. John, who at Ephesus trained the disciples 
Polycarp, Ignatius, and Papius to preserve and disseminate 
apostolic doctrines in Smyrna and other cities of Asia. In 
the erection of this church edifice by Justinian, upon the 
spot where the venerable apostle preached in his declining 
years, were employed the marbles of Diana's temple. Vis- 
iting these scenes, Asian cities, and churchal ruins, 
strengthens my belief in the existence of Jesus, the general 
authenticity of the Gospels, and the profound love-riches of 
John's Epistles. It is the land of inspiration, of prophecy, 
and of spiritual gifts. Even the skeptical Gibbon, writing 
of the " seven churches in Asia," virtually admits the fulfill- 
ment of the apocalyptic visions. (Gibbon's " Decline and 
Fall," chap, lxiv.) 

Eusebius and others tell us of the profound reverence 
that all the early believers in the doctrines of Jesus had 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE AGES. 349 

for this aged and loving saint, who sorrowed with Christ 
in the garden, stood by him at the cross, received in charge 
Mary the mother of Jesus, and clairvoyantly beheld him 
ascend to the homes of the angels. This sentence from 
his pen will live for ever: " God is love." When he had 
become too weak and infirm to walk to the old primitive 
church edifice in Ephesus, his admirers, taking him in their 
arms, would bear him thither : and then, with trembling 
voice, he could only say, * w Little children, love ye one 
another." These and other well-attested historic recollec- 
tions, rushing upon my mind, lift me on to the Mount of 
Transfiguration. 

The sun of the New Testament epistles is John, — the 
sainted John, that lovingly leaned upon Jesus' bosom. In 
youth he was my ideal man. To-day ne is that angel in 
heaven whom I most love. Not Arabia, then, nor Pales- 
tine, but classic Ephesus, is my Mecca. 

The poet Joaquin Miller sings thus oi the " Last Sup- 
per:"— 

" Ah ! soft was their song as the waves are 

That fall in low, musical moans ; 
And sad, I should say, as the winds are 

That blow by the white gravestones. 

What sang they? What sweet song of Zion, 
With Christ in their midst like a crown ? 

While here sat Saint Peter, the lion ; 

And there, like a lamb, with head down, — 

Sat Saint John, with his silken and raven 

Rich hair on his shoulders, and eyes 
Lifting up to the face3 unshaven 

Like a sensitive child in surprise. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

TURKEY IN ASIA. — IONIA AND THE GREEKS. 

The ancient cities of Ionia were wonderfully well situated 
foi the growth of commercial prosperity. The Greeks of 
'o-day have superior talents for finance, and all else that 
relates to sharpness and downright persistency. They cher- 
ish ardent expectations of becoming some day the masters of 
the Mediterranean. To this end, with an eye on Constanti- 
nople, they are busy in devising schemes for the more com- 
plete consolidation of their empire. For acuteness, shrewd- 
ness, and exaggeration, they are said to excel any people in 
the world. It is a common saying in Levantine cities, " He 
lies like a Greek." 

The modern Greeks are handsome. They step quick, are 
gay and airy, have clear complexions, classical faces, fine 
frames, and a noble carriage, that constantly excites increas- 
ing admiration. Their national costume, a seeming blending 
of Scotch and Turkish, is quite indescribable, though, on 
the whole, decidedly Oriental. They are fond of heavy 
cloaks, long gaiters, close-fitting trousers, fancy colors, and 
all picturesque effects. Proud of their past history, they 
delight to remind the citizens of the Occident that the great- 
est man the Teutons ever had tells us, " The sun of 
Homer shines upon us still ; " and another eminent man 
of the Anglo-Saxon race informs us that "it is Plato's 
tongue the civilized world is even now speaking, and Plato's 
landmarks that fix the boundaries of the different provinces 



TURKEY IK ASIA. — IONIA AND THE GREEKS. 351 

of art and science." During the past forty years the 
Greeks have built over three thousand villages, fifty towns, 
and ten capitals. In Athens, in all the isles of the Archi- 
pelago, where the Greeks have either a governmental foot- 
hold or influence, strenuous efforts are being made to revive 
the written language of the country, — the old Hellenic. 
The Greek language they now use bears far more resem- 
blance to ancient Greek, than does the present Italian to 
Latin. The periodicals printed in Athens to-day may be 
read with perfect ease by such scholars as are well acquainted 
with the Greek of Xenophon and other classical writers of 
that period. The Greeks and Turks are implacable enemies 
all through the East. In the Levantine cities, each reside 
in their own quarters. If they mingle, it is for trade and 
traffic. Both need to learn that " in Christ Jesus," — that 
is, the Christ-principle of brotherhood, — " there is neither 
Jew nor Greek," but all are heirs of a common Father's 
care and inheritance. " God," said the apostle, " is no 
respecter of persons." 

CONSTANTINOPLE. 

It was in the gray of early morning that we sailed calmly 
along the Dardanelles. Oh the glory of that October morn- 
ing ! The ideal becomes the real. The sun now colors the 
eastern sky with gold. Rising, it tips and turns the mina- 
rets to fire. The buildings, the vessels, the mosques, are all 
illuminated. Surely we may exclaim with Byron, — 

" ' Tis the clime of the East, 'tis the land of the sun." 

If Genoa has been called the proud, and Naples the beau- 
tiful, Constantinople may rightly claim for herself the title 
of magnificent. Seated in gardens upon one of seven hills, 
it is not strange that Constantine should have desired to 
move the capital of the Roman Empire to the site occupied 
by the imperial city. No soul alive to the beautiful in na- 
ture, or the exquisite in art, could fail of admiring its lofty 



352 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

and imposing position, its domes, its minarets, its sheltering 
groves of cypress, its hills in the distance, now crimsoning 
into the sear of autumn, and the blue waters that lie at the 
feet of these Moslem splendors. The Golden Horn is all 
that pen painters have pictured it. The Sea of Marmora is 
deep and beautiful. Hardly a ripple danced upon its surface 
during our passage over its crystal depths. What a magnifi- 
cent harbor it would make, with Constantinople for the 
central capital of Europe, Asia, and Africa ! 

How rich in historic association is this city crowned with 
mosques ! Belisarius sailed from here into Africa, and along 
the Italian coast, while Justinian in 553 was erecting the 
present St. Sophia. On the opposite Asian shore, at Scutari, 
the Persians, after their conquests in Egypt and Syria, sat 
for a dozen years threatening the city. Here Tartars, Turks, 
and Croats first planted their unwelcome footsteps in Europe, 
inspiring the beginning of those fearful crusades. The first 
passed through Constantinople in 1097, Alexis reigning. 
About the year 1200, Baldwin conquered the city ; and in 
the fourteenth century the Ottomans in Asia Minor laid the 
foundations of the empire that now extends so far into Eu- 
rope. In 1453 Mohammed II. entered this Christian city in 
great triumph, and transformed it as if by magic into a 
Moslem capital. It is said by the historian, that, entering 
the gates, he steered straight for St. Sophia, to discover the 
priests who were hiding in the cathedral. They having 
escaped by a subterranean passage, he hacked off the head 
of the brazen serpent with his sword, to manifest his hate of 
images, and all forms of idolatry. 

WALKS EST THE CITY. 

How true of this great cosmopolitan city of a million souls 
or more, that " distance lends enchantment to the view " ! 
On the deck of the ship in the harbor, the gigantic tower at 
Pera, the flotilla upon the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus with 
its suburban villages, the palaces of the sultan, the archi- 



TURKEY IN ASIA. — IONIA AND THE GREEKS. 353 

tev. cural effects of the mosques shooting up like marble 
pillars, the dark plumes of the cypresses, the peopled hill 
sides upon the Asian coast, and the stately, massive hospital, 
scene of Florence Nightingale's noble, womanly work during 
the Crimean war, thrilled my soul with intense delight. But 
landing, and seeing the ruin, the filth, the dogs in the streets, 
the mixture of races, the crowded, dirty bazaars, our poetry 
speedily chilled to rigid prose. Surely, — 

" Things are not what they seem." 

Decline and decay characterize the sluggish Turkish na- 
tion. A deathly torpor has seized its vitals. It is truly the 
" sick man " of the Orient. Russia wants the vast domain. 
England and France say, " Hands off! " Germany and the 
central nations of Europe, think it well to maintain the bal- 
ance of power as it is. May not the modernized phase of 
Turkish theology have something to do with this stupor ? 
The Moslems are fatalists. One article of their faith reads 
thus : * — 

" It is God who fixes the will of man, and he is therefore not free in his 
actions. There does not really exist any difference between good and 
evil; for all is reduced to unity, and God is the real author of the acts of 
mankind. " 

" The old Turk residing in the interior of the empire," 
said Mr. Brown, secretary of the American Legation, "is a 
very different man from these modern Turks that linger 
around the capital. The former wears his full trousers and 
flowing robes, surmounts his head with the old-fashioned 
turban, winds his shawl or girdle around his waist, carries 
his pipes and pistols, prays to Allah five times a day, and, 
despising trick, treachery, and duplicity, is sincere and truth- 
ful." 

In point of honesty, truthfulness, and self-respect, nearly 
all travelers unite in saying that the Mussulmans of the Ori- 
ent are superior to Christians, — the Christian masses of 

* See J. P. Brown's Derv., t>. 11. 



354 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Italy, Spain, Russia, or even England. " Behold the cres- 
cent ! " say the Mohammedans : " see how it has triumphed 
over the cross. Is not Allah great ? " For nearly twelve cen- 
turies Mohammed and the Koran have held the religious and 
political destinies of the East ; and at this hour Islamism is 
rapidly extending in Northern Asia, Central Africa, and along 
the borders of the Caspian Sea, affirming there is " one G-od, 
and Mohammed is his apostle ! " 

TURKISH HOSPITALITY. 

It requires little physical labor to live in these Eastern 
countries. Hills and plains are burdened with fruits. The 
climate invites the people to out-of-door life, which cheapens 
home, and renders them content with slovenly and ill-fur- 
nished accommodations. 

The Turks are justly famed for their hospitality. Enter- 
ing one- of their low, flat-roofed houses in the country, they 
immediately bring a cup of coffee, and exclaim with great 
earnestness, " My father is your slave, my mother your 
bondwoman, my wife your servant : my home is yours, — all 
I have is yours." This, of course, is Eastern, and to some 
degree figurative ; but they really mean by it generosity and 
hospitality. Besides the dragoman and donkey, it costs little 
or nothing to travel in Asia Minor. 

Expenses, however, are increasing each year. Europeans 
are teaching the Orientals shrewdness and selfishness. 

LANGUAGE. — SOCIAL CUSTOMS. — WORSHIP. 

The Turkish language is made up of some two parts Ara- 
bic, one Persian, one Tartar, and the remainder from the 
Turkistan dialect, a difficult language to learn. The Arabic, 
a magnificent language, is termed by linguists the Latin of 
the East ; the Turkish is compared to the French ; and the 
Persian to the Italian, liquid and flowing. 

The Turk never eats with his wife. " Man was first made, 
then woman" says Paul. This the Mohammedan quotes as 



TURKEY IN ASIA. — IONIA AND THE GREEKS. 355 

glibly as the Christian minister produces other passages from 
this apostle to bear against woman. 

No good Mohammedan touches swine's flesh, or wines of 
any kind : these alcoholic drinks he terms " fire-draughts of 
hell." If you reprove them for polygamy, they, at once 
refer you to the practices of Abraham, Jacob, Solomon, and 
other biblical characters praised by Christians. 

The government of Turkey is an absolute monarchy. 
The sultan's will is law. He is the supreme head of the 
Mohammedan faith. These Mohammedans believe that the 
Koran came direct from heaven, through the Angel Gabriel, 
and that divine inspirations came to Mohammed from Allah 
the same as in past times to Jesus and Moses. 

I visited a large number of mosques. 

Taking off the shoes before entering is expected and 
demanded. The imams (priests), facing Mecca, lead in the 
prayers to the one God, — Allah. Their sermons are highly 
moral, explaining the Koran, and its relation to the Old and 
New Testaments. Mohammed, though permitting a plurality 
of wives in imitation of the Hebrew patriarchs, recom- 
mended but one. 

Extravagance is thinning the ranks of the harems. Few 
Turks care to support more than one wife to display her 
richly-colored garments in the bazaars. Though silks, satins, 
and fine plain merino cloths, are worn, the Levantine women, 
as well as those of the extreme East, are as fond of gay trim- 
mings as they are of their ease. French styles are rapidly 
creeping into all Turkish countries. 

The muezzin's calls sound from the minarets of the 
mosques five times a day, — at the break of morning, at twelve 
o'clock, at two hours before sundown, at the going-down of 
the sun, and again two hours after sunset. We recollect 
ascending the minaret of a mosque, that, like most of the 
ancient structures of the East, had long passed its age of 
beauty. The Oriental coloring had faded ; the pavements 
were sunken, and the mosaics crumbling, and dropping from 



356 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the wall. Still the lofty hight, the majesty of the columns, 
the immense dome, deeply impressed us, and will other 
beholders for centuries to come. It was near the hour of 
twelve. Soon the muezzin came out from near the summit 
of the minaret, summoning to prayer in these words: " Allah 
akbar, Allah akbar, La illah il Allah, Mohammed resoul 
Allah, Allah akbar." (God is great. There is no God but 
God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God. Come to 
prayer ; come to security and peace. God is most great : 
there is no God but God.) They intone these prayer words 
of invitation in a plaintive, half-singing style, often varying 
them to suit the occasion. In the morning they usually cry, 
" Awake, awake and pray. It is better to pray than to 
sleep. There is but one God, Allah." At noon the piteous, 
pleading voice falls upon them, " God is great ; the world 
is wicked. Come to prayer. There is but one God, Allah 
the merciful." 

It is almost an absolute impossibility to convert a Moham- 
medan to evangelical Christianity. They can not subscribe 
to the Trinity ; can not comprehend how Jesus Christ can be 
" very God," and yet the " Son of God ; " can not understand 
how Jesus existed before his mother, and is of the same age 
as his Father. It is not quite plain to us ! 

TURKISH WOMEN". 

Polygamy, or any form of " social freedom " involving 
promiscuity, is a practical hell in any country. Envies and 
jealousies abound. The caliphs have for weary years main- 
tained more or less eunuchs as attendants in their harems. 

The general characteristics of Turkish women may be best 
studied on Moslem festival-days. 

They are not so really dressed as draped in a flowing robe, 
over which hangs a loose mantle, nearly covering the lower 
portion of their trousers. Their feet are small, and show 
very distinctly while walking. Over their yellow slippers 
they wear an ugly-looking overshoe, which they slip off 



TURKEY IN ASIA. — IONIA AND THE GREEKS. 357 

when going into a mosque to worship. Indulging in the 
luxuries of the Turkish bath, they have the appearance 
of being exceedingly neat. Notwithstanding their veils, 
and professed seclusion from society, there is no difficulty 
in seeing them or their faces. Their features are generally 
small and delicate. Their veils are made of very trans- 
parent muslin, covering all but the eyes and upper por- 
tions of their neatly-painted cheeks. As a rule it is safe to 
infer this : the more symmetrical and beautiful the features, 
the more thin and gauze-like the veil. 

The time was when the facial veils of Turkish ladies were 
really opaque : now, unless the woman is exceedingly lean 
and ugly, they are as thin as those through which the blushes 
of American brides may be seen, really enhancing the beauty 
they pretend to conceal. 

Silly vanity is seen in all countries. 

Though these women's eyes are hazel and handsome, they 
sparkle with no great life-purpose ; their motions in walking 
are ungraceful ; their figures resemble bundles of foreign 
drapery ; and they are said by those who know them the most 
intimately to be exceedingly ignorant, helpless, insipid, and 
shiftless. Since polygamy is the rule, since they are the 
slaves of men's pleasures and passions, what otherwise could 
be expected? And these wives 1 , these women, are to be 
future mothers. 

As the Turk, who can have many wives, can have but one 
mother, the sultan's mother is virtually queen. The mis- 
tress of the treasury is next in honor to the queen, filling an 
intermediate place between the sultan and women of the 
harem. The Turks are very fond of the blonde Circassians. 
Purchasing them is now forbidden. 

MOHAMMEDAN DERVISHES. 

What Shakers and Quakers are to evangelical Christians, 
dancing dervishes are to Mohammedans. They believe in 
Allah, and in present inspirations and revelations. The 



358 AROUND THE WORLD. ' 

elders are seers and celibates. Their lodges are retired 
homes. Their worship is unique ; their so-called dancing 
being more properly whirling. The healing dervishes, 
reducing themselves physically by subsisting upon two and 
three olives a day, perform the most remarkable deeds dur- 
ing their holy month of Ramazan. We saw them form 
their circle for the healing of the sick. When prepared by 
gesticulation, whirling motions, chants, and prayers, the 
sheiks, that is the elders, — healed by touch, by the use 
of " Mohammed's brass hand," and by treading, literally 
treading, in this state of ecstasy, upon the crippled limbs 
and diseased bodies of the sick, some of which were infants. 
If disease were located in the eyes, throat, or brain, they 
pathetized them. The Crown Prince of Prussia stood by 
our side " unshod," after the Mohammedan custom, while 
witnessing the healings, and the magnetic and instrumen- 
tal feats, of this primitive people in their consecrated 
room. 

Through my interpreter, who spoke Arabic and Syriac, 
as well as Turkish and English, I held long conversations 
with the sheiks concerning the origin of their orders, their 
worship, their visions, their knowledge of the spirit-world, 
and their gifts of healing. 

SPIRITUALISM IN TURKEY. 

There are excellent mediums and many Spiritualists in 
Constantinople. During the winter season they hold regu- 
lar circles in Pera, the European part of the city. Writing 
and trance are the usual forms of manifestation. These 
spirits, with a few exceptions, teach re-incarnation. In- 
vited, we addressed the Spiritualists in the hall of the 
Chambre de Commerce. The attention they gave, and the 
interest they manifested, were truly inspiring. 

The Hon. John P. Brown, connected with the legation, 
and a thirty -years' resident of Turkey, I found to be a 



TURKEY IN ASIA. — IONIA AND THE GREEKS. 359 

firm Spiritualist. In a letter written to the " Universe," 
he said, — 

"Many Moslems also fully believe in a power or faculty of the 
spirit of man to see, behold, or have an intuitive perception of, things 
invisible by the ordinary organs of sight. This assertion they sustain 
by the frequent examples of individuals having the most correct and 
exact knowledge of events occurring at a vast distance from them, — of 
visions in which they behold, like pictures passing before their eyes, 
scenes of which they have never had any previous knowledge or percep- 
tion. . . . These Turkish Spiritualists are always people of well-known 
purity and virtue, animated with the highest degree of benevolence, and 
deeply interested in the spiritual welfare of others. This belief is 
often acted upon and exercised in such a manner by others as to lead 
some persons to suppose that Spiritualism and animal magnetism are 
one and the same thing; for the pious Moslem believes that he can 
effect cures, or at least give relief from bodily sufferings, by prayer, 
and the imposing of his hands on the invalid." 

TURKISH CHARACTERISTICS. 

Human nature is naturally good, yet subject to the influ- 
ences of environment. While there are good Turks — good 
in spite of their sectarian ecclesiasticism — the majority of 
them, especially in cities and populous centres, are ignorant, 
selfish, bigoted and fanatical, hating both Hindoos and Chris- 
tians. They are slave-holders, polygamists and fatalists, 
believing in the Calvinism of predestination. 

Appointed by Gen. Grant U. S. Consul in 1869 to a post 
in Asiatic Turkey, I write what I knew. Seeing and living 
in a given nationality is knowing. The stale story tossed 
about by atheistic jesters, that parcels and property left by 
the street-side or by shop-windows are perfectly safe in Turk- 
ish cities as " there are no Christians near," is as silly and 
spongy as it is false. No baser thieves live than the thieves 
of Mohammedan countries. No one having lived in Turkey, 
or traveled extensively in Northern India or Africa, will dis- 
pute this statement ; they are zealots and delight in war ; 
their motto is " down with the infidel " ; their recent Ar- 
menian butcheries reveal their real characteristics. Hindoos 
infinitely prefer English to Mohammedan rule. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

ATHENS. 

" Dream on sweet souls in purpling seas v 

Till we reach the land of Pericles." 

In life's golden time, when listening to the academic dec- 
lamations of students upon the heroism of the ancient 
Greeks, we dreamed of treading the shores of the classic 
land, — land once pre-eminent in poetry, philosophy, paint- 
ing, and the fine arts, and whose republics voiced the heaven- 
winged words of equality and freedom. But the Greeks of 
to-day are ancient Greeks no more. Civilizations move in 
cycles and epicycles. The Grecian mind has been tending 
downwards for full two thousand years. Its present glory 
consists of its ancient ruins. A wizard hand, grayed and 
grim, ever points backward to lost arts, lost grandeur ! 

Do we not remember Byron, whose lamp of life faded 
under the Grecian skies he so enthusiastically loved ? How 
musical his lines ! — 

" Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle 
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, — 
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, 
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime ? 

"lis the clime of the East, — tis the land of the Sun : 
Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done ? " 

Piraeus is the prominent port of Greece. Athens is five 
miles distant from this landing. There is a railroad. But 
here, here, is the once classic city. 



ATHENS. 361 

Never can we forget our sensations when casting a first 
glance at the Acropolis. Passing up the Propillion, or 
grand entrance, we had a fine view of Mars Hill, where 
Paul preached the "Unknown God" to the Athenians 
Two massive pillars of the Temple of Bacchus are still 
standing. There was a subterranean passage leading from 
this temple of mystic rites into the vast amphitheater. 
The Temple of Minerva and the Temple of the Winds are 
nearly piles of ruin. The Temple of the Muses, nine 
figures of choicest marble, must have been very beautiful. 
To the right of the Acropolis, massive and stately, is the 
Temple of Jupiter Olympus, many of whose proud columns, 
having defied the storms and devastating forces of time, 
remain as standing signals of architectural splendor and per- 
fection. England has rifled some of these old temples to 
supply its museums with models for modern sculptors and 
artists. 

Among the most celebrated of the ancient oracles was 
Delphos. Princes and philosophers flocked thither for con- 
sultations. Upon the nights of Mount Parnassus stood the 
magnificent Temple of Apollo ; while at the foot was the 
spring of Castalia. Of this fountain, the Pythia, or priest- 
ess, drank ; and in its crystal waters she bathed before 
invoking the presence of the gods. Then clothing herself 
in white, emblem of purity, she was magnetized by spirits, 
and spoke under their influence. 

Nestling near the base of Mars Hill is the prison-cave 
where superstitious Greeks confined that ancient Grecian 
philosopher and Spiritualist, Socrates. The coarsely con- 
structed iron gate, nearly wasted away, is still shown the 
traveler. The dingy, chalky apartment seemed cut into the 
side of the hill, — a gloomy den to converse with a Crito 
and an Alcibiades. Greece and Judea awarded to their 
inspired teachers crosses and hemlock-draughts. Such was 
gratitude. Have the times, only in methods, materially 
changed ? 



362 AROUND THE WORLD. 

It was our purpose to have visited the plains of Mara- 
thon; the ruins of Corinth; the isle of Salamis, memora- 
ble for the great battle in which the Persian fleet of Xerxes 
was defeated by the Greeks 480 B.C. ; and Eleusis, which 
introduced the famous Eleusinian mysteries into Athens as 
early as 1356 B.C. ; but brigandage presented a formidable 
obstacle. Political outlaws are a perpetual scourge to the 
country. The government, though practically absolute, 
fails to institute and perpetuate law and order. In sorrow 
we turn from modern to ancient Greece. 

NAPLES. 

The Bay of Naples lifts the soul ki thought to such shim- 
mering seas as are said to dot the summer-land scenery of 
angel realms. The city itself, crescent-formed, is backed by 
an amphitheater of hills and mountains, the rocky slopes of 
which are covered with sunny villas, and sprinkled with 
orange and lemon, with fig and oleander. Fanned by 
invigorating sea-breezes, and walled in the distance by the 
Apennines, Naples sits a very queen upon the edge of crys- 
tal waters, unrivaled for the beauty of her situation. 

The streets are paved with lava, and in the winter season 
thronged with strangers. Traveling the narrow sidewalks, 
one feels continually cramped, and sighs for the roomy 
promenades of prairie cities in the West. 

Terraced toward St. Elmo, some of the houses seem cling- 
ing to rocky cliffs. Certain streets actually lie hundreds of 
feet above their immediate neighbors. The dearth of fresh, 
handsome buildings, and modern works of art, creates a 
soul-longing, for which the magnificent discovery of Hercu- 
laneum and Pompeii, with their matchless treasures of 
antiquity, only in some measure compensate. The narrow, 
dingy Streets, the high, palace-shaped, yet badly constructed 
dwelling-houses, with huge iron gates in front, flat roofs, and 
balconies projecting from nearly every window ; the never- 
ceasing noise, the interminable rattling of wheels during the 



ITALY. 363 

hours of day and night ; the insolent importunities of car- 
riage-drivers, with hordes of pitiable beggars combining the 
most cringing manners with malicious attempts and devices 
at extortion, — all present a life-picture any thing but 
attractive. 

GARIBALDI AND THE MONKS. 

Standing in the Palace Square one day with Signor 
Damiani, he pointed us to the balcony from which Garibaldi, 
in 1860, uttered this stirring sentence to an immense multi- 
tude : — 

" Brothers, believe me, the greatest foe to freedom, the greatest 
enemy of Italy, is the Pope of Rome." 

This liberator of the people, Garibaldi, drove into Naples, 
Sept. 6, in an open carriage, directly past the fortified 
barracks of the Carmine, where soldiers were still holding 
out for Francis II. Not a hair of his head was harmed. 
Victor Emmanuel offered to make him a duke, and give him 
a large pension. He declined the dukeship, declined all 
honors, only caring to see Italy free, united, and happy. 

Moping, brown-garbed, barefooted monks, a class of men 
that neither work nor wash, are as thick in Naples and the 
adjoining country as office-seekers in Washington. Italy 
was a clover-field for gowned monks, and a veritable para 
dise for priests, till Garibaldi, a few years since, partiall} 
aroused the people from their dream of submission. Thanl 
God ! say students and the young Italians of to-day, the 
number of these churchal orders is lessening each year 
Many of these monks literally live by begging. Lifting 
their greasy caps, and exposing their shaved heads, the}* 
plead by the wayside for a penny. Beggars and priests are 
the products of Roman Catholic Italy. Papal Rome is the 
hub of this ecclesiastic wheel. 

Out of between twenty and thirty millions of Italians, 
hardly seven millions can read and write ! The bare state- 



364 AROUND THE WORLD. 

ment of such a fact, in connection with the stupid ignorance 
and wretched beggary of the middle and lower classes, is 
of itself a scathing condemnation of Roman-Catholicism. I 
had the honor of being present at the Anti-Council, or 
Congress of Free- Thinkers, called by Count Ricciardi, a 
Neapolitan deputy in Parliament, at Naples, on Dec. 8, 
1869, the day on which was convoked the Council of the 
Vatican. 

Noble and high-minded as was this body of men, the police, 
interfering, dispersed the delegates. They met afterwards 
in secret. The Pope shorn of his temporal power, speech is 
now free in Naples. 

THE MUSEUM IN NAPLES. 

This massive building, commenced in 1587 as a university, 
was finally adapted by Ferdinand I., in 1T90, to a museum. 
Enriched with Etruscan vases, papyrus manuscripts, and 
Egyptian antiquities, as well as recently excavated treasures 
from Pompeii and Herculaneum, it is one of the most inter- 
esting museums in the world. The library contains about 
two hundred and fifty thousand volumes, and nearly three 
thousand manuscripts, some of which date to the eighth and 
tenth centuries. "What interested us more intensely was the 
antiquities found in Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried for 
nearly two thousand years. The surgical implements, agri- 
cultural implements, ear-rings, brooches, chains, combs, gold 
lace, and ornaments of every kind, show clearly to what a 
high state of civilization the Pompeiians had attained before 
the Christian era. Not only these, but loaves of bread with 
the baker's name thereon stamped, honeycomb, grains, fruits, 
eggs, bottles of oil and wine hermetically sealed by the 
Vesuvius eruption of 79, are now exhibited in a wonderful 
state of preservation in this museum. In the Royal Library 
attached to this building are more than seventeen hundred 
papyri found in Herculaneum. These, with nearly as many 
found in Pompeii, are being unrolled and deciphered, prepara- 
tory to publication. 



ITALY. 365 

POMPEII AM) HERCULANETJM. 

Cinder-shingled Vesuvius buried these cities on the 
24th of August in the year 79 of the Christian era. Their 
origin is lost in the misty regions of mythology. They 
were prosperous and famous more than two thousand years 
since. Livy speaks of their harbors as " magnificent naval 
stations." Fifty years before the advent of the Nazarene, 
the geographer Strabo praised the excellence of Pompeii's 
grain and oils. Roman patricians had embellished adjoining 
landscapes with splendid villas. Marius, Pompey, and 
Caesar had residences in these cities. 

Here, too, Cicero had a charming villa. He speaks of its 
beauty in a letter to Atticus, associating it with Tusculum. 
Pliny, the naturalist, was in charge of the Roman fleet 
stationed at Misenum when the catastrophe transpired. 
Striving to save others, he lost his life. To the younger 
Pliny are we indebted for a most graphic description of the 
scene. Ruthless as was this destruction, an index finger 
pointed to a compensation ; for, if Vesuvius destroyed, it 
also shielded and preserved. Beautiful are the paintings 
and statues lapilli-entombed for nearly two thousand years. 
The excavations were commenced in 1748. During the 
exhumations, about one thousand bodies have been found, 
and with them papyrus, coins, cups, keys, necklaces, brace- 
lets, rings, seals, engraved gems, beautiful lamps, gauzy 
fabrics, and even well-preserved blonde hair. 

Pompeii is now almost completely unearthed. The res- 
urrection is quite perfect. It was good for me to be there. 
Walking its Roman-paved streets, I felt introduced to the 
citizens and customs of an ancient civilization. And yet 
Pliny characterized this period as the age of " dying art," — 
dying as compared with those artists, Apelles and Pro- 
togenes, living nearly five hundred centuries earlier. 
Pompeii and Herculaneum are bridges spanning the gap of 
centuries, and holding together as with a golden link 



366 AROUND THE WORLD. 

two civilizations. Studying the wisdom of the ancients 
compels us to recognize the spiritual unity of the race, that 
grand central truth around which the moral world revolves. 

ITALIAN CHURCHES. 

The real pride of Italy is her relics and churches. They 
are certainly rich in the artistic work of the masters. These 
paintings excite the most lively feelings of taste and fancy, 
as well as intensify reflections of a deeper nature, connected 
with the illustrious of past centuries. Still for devotional 
purposes they do not compete with the Gothic structures of 
Northern Europe. Churches exhibit national character. 
Floods of sunbeams through stained glass, mosaic pavements, 
variegated pillars, costly ornaments, priestly robes, smoking 
incense, airs that breathe of gayety, and 

" Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, 
That waft the soul upon a jig to heaven," — 

are among the indispensables of joyous, impressional Italians. 
Italy's church-edifices to-day are absolutely magnificent ; but 
with the decline of Roman-Catholicism, and the increase of 
knowledge, they will gradually assume the Protestant type, 
ultimating into elegant places of resort for educational pur- 
poses and scientific lectures. 

ROME. 

And this is Rome, — proud, seven-hilled Rome ! The prin- 
cipal street is Corso. To the left of the Pincian Hill is the 
Tiber, rolling along its muddy tide as in old historic periods. 
Not far from its banks is the column of Trajan, and also that 
of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus one hundred and twenty-two 
feet high, and crowned with a statue of St. Paul; while 
there rises the dome of the Pantheon, and the cupolas and 
towers of costly churches. On the other bank of the Tiber, 
just over the bridge, is the massive tower of Hadrian's Mau- 
soleum, or Castle of St. Angelo ; and, beyond, the grand old 



ITALY. 367 

Palace of the Vatican, from whence have gone edicts shak- 
ing kingdoms, and making crowned heads tremble. 

The population of the Eternal City is about one hundred 
and eighty-five thousand. Of this number, nearly ten thou- 
sand are ecclesiastics of some kind. Only think, — one to 
every eighteen of the people ! The streets are thronged with 
cardinals in scarlet, priests in shining black, and barefooted 
monks in hideous brown. 

On Christmas Day, 1869, there were seven hundred and 
sixty-five church dignitaries in the city, connected with the 
Ecumenical Council. Of these, there were fifty-five car- 
dinals, eleven patriarchs, six hundred and forty-seven pri- 
mates, archbishops, and bishops, six abbots, twenty-one 
mitred abbots, and twenty-eight generals of monastic orders. 

Never will the scene fade from our memory, of standing, 
and seeing these seven or eight hundred fathers of the 
Church reverently bow, and kiss the brazen toe of that ugly- 
visaged, speechless statue of Jupiter, christened St. Peter. 
Around Peter's tomb lamps are kept perpetually burning. 
Devout visitors to the Vatican, from America even, fre- 
quently kiss the genuine, though elegantly slippered, toe of 
the pope. The act is said to symbolize obedience and sub- 
mission. The kisses of the faithful have worn the cold foot 
of the bronze statue of St. Peter to the thinness almost of a 
knife's edge. Praying and kissing continually abound in St. 
Peter's, while without the templed walls beggars are plead- 
ing for crusts of bread. 

WANDERINGS IN THE ETERNAL CITY. 

Home must be judged by its own standard. It can not be 
compared with other great cities. It has no commerce, no 
manufactures, no enterprise, — nothing of what is considered 
essential to life in London or New York. It is the home of 
Popery, the center of a Judaized Christianity ; and hence 
its very life is death, —-the " second death," so difficult of 
resurrection. 



368 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Roman manufactures consist of ecclesiastic bulls, edicts, 
commentaries, and creeds ; of mosaics, cameos, scarfs, and 
copies of pictures. She imports her cloths, cottons, railway 
materials, cutlery, china, carriages, and military weapons. 
Teeming with the accumulated treasures of ages, she encour- 
agingly allows her destitute children to be assisted by infidel 
foreigners, whose heretical books she confiscates, and whjse 
souls she consigns — or would, had she the power — to eternal 
torments. 

The Pantheon is one of the best preserved monumental 
buildings of this ancient city. On the day of our visit, the 
Piazza was dirty, and crowded with market-women. Rome 
would do well to wash her devotees. The edifice has sixteen 
columns of granite ; each surmounted by a frieze and entab- 
lature, containing an inscription, which informs us that this 
" heathen temple " was founded by Agrippa, the friend of 
Augustus, 27 years B.C. 

The Coliseum is considered the greatest wonder of Rome. 
Its magnitude surpassed all my previous conceptions. The 
circumference of its area is over one-third of a mile. It has 
four stories, each of a different order, — the Doric, Ionic, 
Corinthian, and the Composite, — terminating by a parapet. 
It is estimated that it would comfortably seat ninety thou- 
sand people. Masses of stones have been taken from these 
ruins to build palaces in the modern city ; and yet the 
structure is so immense, their absence is hardly noticeable. 
The Coliseum and Forum should be seen by moonlight, say 
travelers. Midnight hours might throw a mysterious 
drapery around these ruins, concealing their imperfections, 
and hightening their grandeur ; still I am sufficiently practical 
to prefer sunlight and daylight. The Coliseum was com- 
menced in A.D. 72, by Vespasian, and completed eight 
years after by Titus. Much of the work was done by cap- 
tive Jews. The opening festival scene, say historians, lasted 
a hundred days. Almost two thousand years has it stood 
a monument tD Roman enterprise and muscular barbarity 



ITALY. 369 

And yet recent excavations reveal pavements, marble statues, 
and finely finished granite columns, thirty feet below the 
level of the arena. Evidently there was a previous building 
of massive dimensions on this site, the constructors of which 
were pre-historic. 

st. peter's and the beggars. 

The first sight of this most gorgeous of earthly temples 
strikes the traveler with a sense of unspeakable grandeur. 
This increases with each succeeding visit, till you stand 
under the firmament of marble, and cast your eye along the 
richly-ornamented nave, along the statue-lined transepts, 
and up into that circling vault, — that wondrous dome, sup- 
ported by four piers, each 284 feet in periphery, and then 
you feast upon the fullness of its magnificence. The build- 
ing stands on a slight acclivity in the north-western corner 
of the city. It is built in the form of a Latin cross, the 
nave being in length 607 feet, and the transept 444 feet. 
The east front is 395 feet wide, and 160 feet high ; whilst the 
pillars composing it are each 88 feet high, and 8£ in diame- 
ter. The hight of the dome, from the pavement to the top 
of the cross, is 448 feet. In front of the church there is a 
large piazza. The church occupies the place of Nero's circus, 
and is erected on the spot where St. Peter was martyred. 
It occupied a period of one hundred and seventy-six years 
in building, and required three hundred and sixty years to 
perfect it. It cost ten million pounds ; it covers eight 
English acres ; and is kept in repair at a cost of six thou- 
sand three hundred pounds per annum. 

Raphael's " Transfiguration " is in the Vatican. The great 
master put his soul into this production. It was his last 
work ; and, while executing it, he seems to have been con- 
scious of standing upon the very verge of the summer-land. 
He died before finishing it, at the early age of thirty-seven 
years. After the departure of this great master-painter, the 
" Transfiguration " was suspended over his corpse. He now 
tanks a star in the art-galleries of heaven. 



370 AROUND THE WORLD. 

But who are these ? Why such a troop of beggars at oui 
heels ? Is this not a Christian city ? Does not the vicegerent 
of Christ here reside ? Did not Peter and Paul here preach ? 
Was there not a special epistle addressed to the Romans f 
Did not Jesus command his followers to sell what they 
had, and give it to the poor, and follow him ? Is this the 
fruit of nearly two thousand years of Christian teaching 
and practice ? When among the heathen Indians of the 
great north-west, with the Congressional committee, I saw 
little begging ; but here, near the feet of the visible Christ, 
Pius IX., I am surrounded by filth, beggars, and rags, or the 
scarlet of cardinals. While working for the downfall of 
Antichrist, my constant prayer is, " Thy kingdom come, and 
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 

Just under the shade of Pincian Hill, in a magnificent park, 
musical from flowing fountains, and dotted with palms and 
flowering-plants from the tropics, I took leave of Prince 
George de Solms, the personal kindnesses of whom I can 
never forget. Rome, its ruins and relics, its glory and 
its shame, I leave with the prayer of faith. If the pope 
has been pronounced " infallible," his temporal power is 
gone forever. Roman-Catholicism is waning in Europe ; and 
Rome, city of the Csesars, is dreaming of a resurrection. 

FLORENCE. 

Southern Europe is grim with the ghosts of dead cities. 
Florence, the glory of the middle ages, and formerly capital 
of Tuscany, is built in the form of a pentagon. Its popula- 
tion is something over one hundred and thirty thousand. 
This city was for a season the scene of the brave yet fiery 
Savonarola's labors. A kind of second Calvin, he was 
called the Catholic reformer of Florence. The pope trem- 
bled under his thunderbolts. Through the city flows the 
Arno. The suburban eminences are crowned with charming 
villas interspersed with clumps of olive-trees. These grow 
in such luxuriance that they called out one of Ariosto's 
sweetest songs. 



ITALY. 371 

Just out of this city, under cypress-trees shading a plain 
brown-marble monument, reposes all that is mortal of one 
who, not only in America, but in all enlightened lands, lives 
on earth immortal. The slab has only this : — 

THEODORE PARKER. 

Born at Lexington, Mass., U. S. A., AtrG. 24, 1810. 
Died at Florence, May 10, 1860. 

Standing by the grave of this man, who was too broad for 
a sect, and too noble for a priest, strange and deep emotions 
thrilled my being's center ; and I was proud that I had per- 
sonally known him in life. Near by is the monument of 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning with simply the plain initials, 
" E. B. B." The inscription, exceedingly unassuming, 
seems a veritable prophecy from herself in these lines : — 

" A stone above my heart and head, 
But no name written on the stone." 

Among other distinguished Italians, I here met Girolamo 
Parisi, the editor and publisher of the " Aurora," a well- 
conducted periodical, printed in Florence, and devoted to 
Spiritualism, psychology, phrenology, and moral philosophy. 
Its pages are rich in sound, substantial teachings. In doc- 
trine, it accepts the re-incarnation system of the French 
school. 

Happy were the hours I spent in the society of Baron 
Kirkup. Encircled by distinguished men of rank, having a 
massive library of books treating of magic and the unsys- 
tematized philosophy of the mystics, and being a practical 
mesmerist withal, the baron was brought into the fold of 
Spiritualism over eighteen years since ; and he has never 
shrunk from a frank avowal of his principles. His daughter 
is 'the principal medium he consults. Some of the manifes- 
tations he has witnessed are absolutely astounding. 



372 ABOUND THE WOELD. 

Our poet Longfellow, attending a seance at Baron Kirk- 
up's residence, avowed himself a believer in the present 
ministry of angels. 

Appreciating the baron's labors in the restoration of the 
painting of Dante, there was conferred upon him by royal 
decree, La Corona oV Italia. He had previously been 
" knighted " by Victor Emmanuel. 

Spiritism is a fact, and so acknowledged by psychic re- 
search societies and the most erudite men of the age. It is 
a fact freighted with many frauds and fraudulent mediums. 
Let them be exposed — all of them be exposed. Let the 
tares be pulled up and cast into the fire. I repeat, let them 
be exposed, whether fraudulent mediums or fraudulent 
Christians in pulpits wearing the livery of Heaven. In 
this matter we are a unit, dear brethren. 

But as the heavens are higher than the earth, so is Spirit- 
ualism higher than Spiritism. Spiritualism is a truth, and 
all truth is immortal, " I am the way and the truth and the 
life," said the Christ of Nazareth. Spiritualism is also a 
religion and a philosophy. It is the complement of primitive 
Christianity and the antidote to materialism. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

EUROPE AND ITS CITIES. 

Oriental life has a never-ending charm ; the c harm of 
beauty, of tropical freshness, and perpetual summer. Hum- 
boldt declares in his " Cosmos," that a man once residing in 
the spice-lands of the palm and the banana, the cactus and 
the orange, can never be content to live again in the colder 
latitudes. 

We reached this Austrian city, Trieste, the loth of 
September. The cholera was prevalent, and the American 
consul absent in Vienna. Next to Naples, the harbor of 
Trieste is the most beautiful in Europe. The city is 
eminently commercial. Italian is the language most spoken. 
Nearly all nationalities may be seen in Trieste. The Greeks 
retain their turbans and flowing robes. Dark-haired, black- 
eyed Italians do the shop-keeping. Occasionally a German 
blonde threads the streets. The wealthier class of citizens 
reside in beautiful villas high up the mountain-side, and a 
little north of the city. 

Leon Favre, the Consul-General of France, and a devoted 
Spiritualist, resides in Trieste. Unfortunately he was absent. 
Happy were the hours we spent with this gentleman and 
scholar, several years since, in Paris. 

Signor G. Parisi, another eminent Spiritualist, whom we 
first saw in Florence, meeting us in the street, embraced us 
with a love paternal and fraternal. It is as customary in 
Southern Europe for men to embrace and kiss as for women. 
" Greet ye one another with a holy kiss " (2 Cor. xiii. 12). 



374 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Capt. Richard Burton, noted in literature, known as a 
visitor to Mohammed's tomb, and a traveler in Africa, is the 
British consul in this city. So far as the captain has any- 
religious bias, it is towards Spiritualism. If he visits 
America next season, we may accompany him on a tour to 
Yucatan, and various ruins in South America. 

VENICE, QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC. 

" I heard in Venice sweet Tasso's song, 
By stately gondola borne along." 

This is decidedly an odd city, a city built upon over a 
hundred little islands, a city with canals for streets. Only 
think of being taken from the depot, and rowed about the 
city in search of a hotel ; think of seeing front-doors open 
on to the water ; think of the queer taste that could 
select such a site for a city. Byron's ecstasies over Venice 
puzzle .us. 

The Venetian Republic elected its first doge, or president^ 
A.D. 697. Its armies ultimately conquered the Genoese. 
The hundred Catholic churches of Venice, though rich in 
paintings, look interiorly dark and gloomy ; the streets are 
narrow and tortuous ; the marbled palaces are grayed and 
grim ; and the " gay gondoliers," who propel those four 
thousand licensed gondolas, are very much like other men 
that work for money. By a Venetian law dating back three 
hundred years, the gondolas are painted black. This gives-, 
them a hearse-like appearance. The aristocratic classes 
have their palaces on the Grand Canal, and keep their 
gondolas as our wealthier citizens keep their carriages. The 
city lias three hundred and seventy-eight arched bridges 
of either iron or marble, and high enough for the passage of 
gondolas under them. 

To religionists, St Mark's Cathedral is the charmed center ; 
to poets and sentimentalists, the Bridge of Sighs, rendered 
famous in Byron's " Childe Harold," — 

" I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, 
A palace and a prison on each hand." 



EUKOPE AND ITS CITIES. 375 

The hundred old palaces gracing the Grand Canal are 
named after their founders. Many of them are magnificent 
even in decline. By paying a small fee, the doctor and self 
were permitted to stroll through one of these splendid 
palaces, so unique, so rich in furniture and paintings, golden 
mirrors, and specimens of antiquity. Venice boasts the 
largest painting in the world. Venetian ladies, going to 
church, wear veils upon their heads. They are exquisite 
singers. Guides and gondoliers show the house from which 
Desdemona eloped with the Moor, and the residence of 
Shylock, who dealt so mercilessly with the Merchant of 
Venice. Enough of fiction : give us facts. 

MILAN. 

Northern Italy is transcendently beautiful. Most of the 
distance from Venice through Verona to Milan presents a. 
continuous scene of luxuriant vegetation. The fortified 
towns, the chain of mountains on our right, terraced with 
vineyards, the lovely Lake of Garda linking Italy to Austria, 
and the irrigated lawns and landscapes, made our soul all 
the day sunny with gladness. Milan, considering the state 
of civilization and progress, is evidently the finest city in 
Italy, and the best-paved city in Europe. It is walled, with 
the gradings, gardens, and ornamental shrubbery so arranged 
that it seems surrounded with a park. The center of 
attraction to strangers is the world-renowned cathedral, a 
full description of which is impossible. To be appreciated 
it must be seen. Built in the form of a Latin cross, its 
length is four hundred and ninety feet, and its breadth one 
hundred and eighty feet. Its rich marble tracery, its forest 
of spires, its seven thousand statues, its aisles, pillars, and 
lofty arches, present a wilderness of magnificence absolutely 
indescribable. From the summit the Alps, with Mont Blanc 
in the blue distance, are clearly visible. As a monument 
of elegant and costly architecture, it must for ages stand 
unrivaled; and yet it is but a pygmy compared with St. 
Peter's at Ilo.ne. 



376 AROUND THE WORLD. 



PARIS AND THE COMMUNE. 



Our route from Milan lay through Turin and Mont Cenis. 
Does not this Alpine tunnel — marvel of enterprise and 
engineering — prophesy of tunneling the English Channel ? 
Paris, proudest city of Europe ! Previous visits to the 
French capital under Napoleon only fanned the desire to see 
it since the Prussian victories, and the reign of that Com- 
mune which raised its spiteful hand against palaces, monu- 
ments, works of art, and rare old libraries, — a Commune 
that madly fired its own city ! Strange way to actualize the 
grand theories of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," by 
obliterating all evidences of former genius and culture ! 

Arriving at Paris in early morning, the first glance showed 
no signs of the war, nor of Communistic vandalism. A 
longer stroll lifted the veil, and revealed the reality. The 
Tuileries, Hotel de Ville, Chateau du Palais-Royal, the 
Louvre, the library of the Louvre, and hundreds of other 
buildings, were either fired or burned to ashes. Men and 
women of the baser sort vied with each other in scattering 
petroleum and mineral oils. Parisians proved themselves 
worse enemies of France than Prussians. 

The Hotel de Ville was famous not less for its antiquity 
and architectural beauties than for having been the place 
where the mayor of Paris handed the tricolor cockade to 
good King Louis XVI. ; where they arrested Robespierre 
July 27, 1794 ; and where the festival was held of the mar- 
riage of Napoleon I. with Marie Louise. 

The pen that writes of Paris between the 18th of March 
and the 28th of May, 1871, should, to correspond with the 
scenes, be dipped in blood. Barbarians have burned cities, 
and annihilated the books and art-treasures they could, not 
understand. But the Commune outdid this, destroying 
indiscriminately museums, libraries, and granaries. The 
burning of Paris was discussed and openly decided upon in 
the councils of the Commune. The decree was published 



EUROPE AND ITS CITIES. 377 

in " The Official Journal." Rigault, Billivray, et al., spent 
their leisure with their mistresses ; while even Pascha? 
Grousset, appointed delegate for foreign affairs, gave him- 
self up with other leaders to bacchanalian excesses. While 
shouting, " Down with the house of Thiers, and confiscate 
his property," decrees went forth, " Use petroleum," " Re- 
peal all law," " Fire the churches," " Suppress the news- 
papers," "Abolish marriages;" and all this in the name 
of liberty, fraternity, freedom, — "social freedom," par 
excellence ! 

Doubtless the Thiers government was in some respects 
oppressive ; but did this justify the atrocities of the Com- 
mune ? Burning a barn to kill a weasel, demolishing a 
costly edifice to get rid of a wasp's nest under the eaves, 
would be a ranting diabolism paralleled only in folly by 
French Communism. 

Excepting Flourens, the leading members of the Com- 
mune seemed inflated with ambition ; inspired with the love 
of money and pleasure, wine and women. 

The Franco-Prussian war, and the Commune, quite effec- 
tually paralyzed Spiritualism. It is now re-gathering its 
scattered forces. At Mrs. Hollis's stance, held in the apart- 
ments of Mrs. Mary J. Holmes, near the Champs-Elysees, I 
had the pleasure of meeting that gifted author, Victor Hugo. 
He wept like a child when receiving a communication from 
a loved friend in spirit-life. 

ILLEGITIMATE CPHLDEEN. 

Official returns from Parisian hospitals last year showed, 
that, of the births in the city, fifteen thousand three hun- 
dred and sixty-six were illegitimate. Boxes called tours are 
established in various parts of Paris, each of which revolves 
upon a pivot, and, on a bell being rung, is turned around by 
the proper person inside, to receive the child that may have 
been deposited. No attempts are made to ascertain the par- 
ents. These children never know a father's care, a mother's 
love. Nurses are secured from the country. 



378 AROUND THE WORLD. 

The suburban villas of Paris send into the foundling hos- 
pitals annually over four thousand of these illegitimate 
children, a large portion of which are received by the Hos- 
pice des Unfants Assistes, founded in 1640. Virtually twenty 
thousand illegitimate children, abandoned by their parents, 
plead yearly in Paris for paternal recognition, and mater- 
nal tenderness, — plead in vain. This is the legitimate out- 
come of French socialism. 

GOETHE AND BARON GTTLDENSTUBBE. 

Neither genius nor true greatness can be entirely discon- 
nected from angel ministrations. Poets, philosophers, all, 
are inspired of the gods. The following, from " Lewes's Life 
of Goethe," refers to the poet's last hours : — 

" The next morning he [Goethe] tried to walk a little up and down 
the room, but after a turn he found himself too feeble to continue. Re- 
seating himself in an easy chair, he chatted cheerfully with Ottilia on 
the approaching spring, which would be sure to restore him. He had 
no idea of his end being so near. It was now observed that his thoughts 
began to wander incoherently. ' See, ' he exclaimed, ' the lovely woman's 
head — with black curls — in splendid colors — a dark background ! ' 
Presently he saw a piece of paper on the floor, and asked how they could 
leave Schiller's letters so carelessly lying about. Then he slept softly, 
and, awakening, asked for the sketches he had just seen. They were 
sketches in a dream." 

An eminent professor, intimately connected to Goethe's 
family, refers to noises, whistling sounds, and voices, heard 
near the close of this great man's life. These are his 
words : — 

" It seemed as if, in a less frequented part of the house, a door either 
unknown, or long forgotten, slowly opened, creaking on its rusty hinges. 
Then a beautiful female spirit-figure appeared, bearing a lamp burning 
with a light-blue flame ; her features were surrounded by a halo of glory. 
She gazed calmly upon the the terror-stricken witnesses, sang a few 
stanzas of some angelic melody, and then disappeared ; the door, closing 
behind her, presenting the same sealed appearance as before. In solemn 



EUROPE AND ITS CITIES. 379 

silence the observers retraced their footsteps to the chamber of mourn- 
ing, and there learned that the spirit had returned to God, who gave it. 
The last words audible were, " More light ! ' " 

When in Paris the first time, guest of Mr. Gledstanes, 
the French Consul Leon Favre accompanied me to the resi- 
dence of the Swedish Baron Louis Guldenstubbe. This 
gentleman, a distinguished Spiritualist, was related to a 
Scandinavian family of great renown. " Two of his ances- 
tors, Knights of the Order of the Grand Templars, and of the 
same name, were burned alive in 1309, in company with 
Jacques de Molay, by order of Pope Clement the Fifth." 

If it be true, as is sometimes asserted, that the country o£ 
one's birth and hereditary descent are not without influence 
upon mediumistic qualities, the baron was favored in both 
these respects. The mother who gave him birth in the 
country of Swedenborg, the mystic Scandinavia, prone to 
Spiritual belief, early initiated him in this kind of reading. 
When quite young he was remarkable for presentiments and 
visions. 

He published several volumes relating to his researches in 
the science of positive and experimental pneumatology, 
besides a deeply interesting contribution upon " direct spirit 
writing." Both himself and sister were mediums. The 
baron recently passed to spirit-life, esteemed highest by 
those who knew him best. 

ALL CITIES REPUDIATED. 

As wens and warts to human bodies, so are cities to a 
country. Unnatural, they are the cesspools of crime, 
competition, and avarice. While Nature has lavished her 
gifts with prodigal hand, men should make community- villas, 
and gardens of hill and dale, each and all earning their bread 
by honest toil. Rome, grim and grand, unites the dead past 
and living present. The Papal Church is the most logical 
of any. It has an infallible God, an infallible Lord Jesus, 
an infallible Church, an infallible Douay Bible, and an infal- 



380 AROUND THE WORLD. , 

lible Pope ; and all communicants have to do is, to attend 
mass, confess their sins, pay their priests, and go to glory ! 

Threading the streets of Naples, and the suburban villages,, 
one wonders how six hundred thousand inhabitants can here 
live. Lazzaroni are thick as flies around pools. Jews, Qua- 
kers, and Shakers take care of their own poor. Lyons, the 
Lowell of France, is alive with silk manufactories. Paris is 
handsome and proud, showy and sinful. Berlin is rich in 
historic and artistic attractions. The cathedrals are open 
at all hours of the day in these cities. On their feet-worn 
floors, prince and peasant meet as equals. Gardens in Euro- 
pean cities and hamlets are enjoyed by the people as by the 
proprietors. Visitors do not presume to meddle with plant 
or flower. The citizens generally are better mannered and 
more polished than in America. Our caste is based upon 
wealth. Our boasted individuality has degenerated into a 
selfish rascality. Our laws punish little, and pardon great 
criminals. New- York City only a year since had sixty thou- 
sand children of school age that had never been inside a 
schoolroom. American self-conceit and English caste are 
both abominable. As nations they are antichrist. 

GRAND OLD LONDON. 

Crossing the English Channel from France to Dover, a 
few hours through the fertile fields of Merry England 
brought us to the heart of London, the city of cities, with a 
population almost equal to that of the whole State of New 
York. Individuals may drive twenty miles in a straight 
line upon any one of London's diameters. The seven parks 
have been termed, not inaptly, the lungs of London. They 
lie chiefly at the West End. The Richmond Park, owned by 
the crown, has two thousand two hundred acres, and is 
eight miles in circumference. Hyde Park claims four hun- 
dred acres. Victoria Park, named in honor of the Queen, is 
comparatively new, but exceedingly beautiful with lake and 
pleasure boats. The Parliament Buildings, Gothic in form. 



EUROPE AND ITS CITIES. 381 

and covering over seven acres, are as queer as magnificent, 
Westminster Abbey, venerable structure where have taken 
place all the coronations since Edward the Confessor, is 
visited more for a sight at the tombs of Shakspeare, Milton, 
Addison, Campbell, Dickens, and other distinguished authors, 
than for worship. Crystal Palace, embracing several hun- 
dred acres, with broad avenues, extensive gardens, floral em- 
bellishments, and within the building statues, paintings, and 
unique marvels, presents rare attractions. Madame Tussaud's 
wax-works are not as admirable as have been represented. 
The Tower of London is stern and gloomy, — the traditions 
repulsive. In one of these towers is a large iron cage, 
containing a collection of jewels estimated at twenty million 
dollars. The great Koh-i-noor diamond is among this col- 
lection. " The crown of her Majesty Queen Victoria is a cap 
of purple velvet, inclosed in hoops of silver, surrounded by 
a ball and cross, all of which are resplendent with diamonds. 
In the center of the cross is the ' inestimable sapphire,' and 
in front of the crown is the heart-shaped ruby said to have 
been worn by the Black Prince." 

Remembering the teaching, " Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures on earth," why not dispose of those jewels and 
diamonds at once, using the proceeds to procure homes for 
the homeless, and bread for orphans ? 

The British Museum is an institution of itself. Blessings 
upon all old book-shops ! English parsons think Oxford the 
mother of the best English. Americans quote Boston as 
authority. The English excel in justice, simplicity of faith, 
and solid friendship ; Americans in tact, originality, and 
audacity. The Latin race is bad at colonizing ; but, wherever 
Englishmen go, they create a new England. Their individ- 
uality, like the sponge, excels in absorbing. Their houses 
are their castles. I admire the English. 

The English have more German characteristics than we. 
In their travels they go to Germany, Italy, or the East. 
Americans rush to Paris. A gulf separates the working 



382 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

people of England from the nobility. The latter clutch 
dead bones to knock the life out from progressive souls. 
And, further, boasting of a titled ancestry, they search at 
the roots of trees for fruits, — such fruits as burden only the 
topmost branches. Though the Nile has many mouths, 
it has no discoverable head. A privileged few own nearly 
all the soil. These have yet to learn that legitimate pro- 
duction is the only basis of ownership. What men by faith- 
ful toil make to grow or produce is theirs, and nothing more. 
There's a tendency in London and throughout England to 
co-operation and a practical communism. 

THE SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK. 

Belief often blossoms out into knowledge. Traveling west- 
ward as a missionary, I circumnavigated the globe, and know 
the world to be round. Progress is the key-word of all na- 
tionalities, and Spiritualism God's witness of a future exist- 
ence, in the Pacific Isles, and all portions of the Orient, as in 
the Occident. Believe me, it was joy unbounded almost, 
after this last, perplexing voyage, to be dropped down in 
London, to walk familiar streets, look into friendly faces, 
clasp cordial hands, listen to the ringing accents of good solid 
English, and receive such a cordial public reception at the 
fine Florence Hotel under the supervision of Mr. J. J. Morse. 

English Unitarianism is icy, arrogant and cultured. Or- 
thodox theology is a spent force. Spiritualism is a living 
gospel power; and the English are making rapid strides in 
the dissemination of its heavenly principles. I could but 
exclaim, How changed since James Burns and self strolled 
through London's labyrinthine streets in search of the Cav- 
endish Rooms, to commence a series of Sunday meetings ! 
Competent editors, erudite essayists, eloquent speakers, and 
superior mediums for demonstrating the reality of the phe- 
nomena are now all doing substantial work upon the temple 
of truth. I was the first Spiritualist lecturer in London. 



EUROPE AND ITS CITIES. 383 

Books, journals, Spiritualist literature of all kinds and 
gradations, are rapidly increasing in England and the British 
Empire. Under this head, the most unique, and the most 
wonderful too, in some directions, are a series of books by 

, entitled the " Book of God," " Book of Enoch," 

" Apocalypse," &c. For acquaintance with Brahmanism, 
Buddhism, and other Oriental religions, together with re- 
search into the mysteries of the East, these volumes stand 
quite unrivaled. 

SUGGESTIONS TO TRAVELERS. 

As a tourist, have some higher purpose than mere pleas- 
ure. 

" O happiness ! our being's end and aim," 

though good poetry, is wretched philosophy. Happiness 
should be no man's " aim." It would be the quintessence 
of selfishness. 

While packing your trunk (one is enough), store away in 
your soul's silent chambers a choice stock of good temper 
and patient forbearance. Passports are no longer necessary, 
even in Turkey or Egypt. In case of accident or trouble, 
however, they might be convenient for identification. Take 
as little clothing as possible ; it is cheaper in most countries 
than America. Guide-books are indispensable ; while guides 
are often a pestilence and a prey. The Bank of England is 
best known in the East ; but a " circular letter of credit " 
from any responsible house in New York or Boston is nego- 
tiable in the prominent cities of foreign countries. If there 
should be any difficulty, our consuls will remedy it. In the 
Asiatic cities secure, for sleeping, an uppermost room : you 
will find better air, and less fleas. 

Fire-arms of all kinds should be left at home : it is gener- 
ally the most cowardly that carry them. Dogs fight because 
they are dogs. Few men are sufficiently brave to run, 
rather than fight. That Miltonian war in heaven was a 
myth ; and all fighting is anti-Christian. The cost of travel 



384 AROUND THE WORLD. 

depends altogether upon tourists. Bating the beggars, and 
the to-be-expected fleecing of travelers, the average hotel 
charges are much cheaper in some parts of Europe, and 
equally as cheap in Asia, as America. 

SUNRISE AROUND THE WORLD. 

It is no marvel that sun-worship was once common in the 
East, nor that modern Parsees look upon the sun as the sym- 
bol of universal light, the divine Intelligence of the uni- 
verse. How true that, in the modified language of another, 
the " morning dawns on the isles of the Pacific, where the 
palm-grove, the coral-reef, and the lagoon are to be seen. 
Westward it moves, irradiating at once Australia and Japan, 
the gold-diggings of the Briton, and the summer gardens of 
the Tycoon. Next Java seas and Chinese waters reflect 
the morn ; the one studded with spicy isles, the other teem- 
ing with ships of antique form. On it goes, lighting up the 
populous cities of China, the shrines of Siam, and the tem- 
ples of Burmah, until the tops of the Himalayas reflect the 
first rays of coming day. Brighter grows the light upon its 
lasting snows, and wide it spreads on either hand, o'er 
ocean's waves and Tartar land, 

' O'er many an ancient river, 
O'er many a palmy plain,' 

until jungle and city, deep defile and Hindoo temple, are 
flooded with the light of day. Onward still it moves, over 
Afghanistan and Persia, until the snows of Ararat are suf- 
fused with a crimson glow. Brighter grows the light, until 
surrounding seas reflect the day, until the camel's shadow is 
projected on the sand, and the mosque and the minaret are 
revealed on Zion's Hill. Onward still it advances in cease- 
less march, illumining the classic shores of the Mediter- 
ranean, and spreading far away to Caffre hut and Lapland 
burrow ; embracing at once Zambesi and Nile valleys, Gre- 
cian isles, and Russian steppes. At length the Alps are all 



EUROPE AND ITS CITIES. 385 

aglow, and the shadows of night chased from the valleys. 
Darkness retires from the scene, and reveals the rolling 
Rhine, the plains of France, and the hills of Spain. The 
British Isles, too, are all in view, — the greensward of Eng- 
land, and Scotia's rugged strand. Having lighted up the 
Old World, westward it moves to seek a New. The waves 
of the Atlantic are irradiated from pole to pole. Ten thou- 
sand sails mirrored on the deep, or rocked by the tempest, 
reflect the day. A New World comes in view, from the 
shores of the Amazon to Labrador ; wide savannas, emerald 
isles, populous cities, mighty rivers, and pine-clad hills, em- 
brace the day. On marches the morn over fertile plains and 
dark primeval forests, over the banks of the Amazon, the 
windings of the Mississippi, the network of railways, and 
the waters of the great lakes, until beyond green savanna 
and rolling prairie it glows on the snows of the Andes, and 
the tops of the Rocky Mountains, where the condor trims his 
plumage, and the grizzly bear skulks to his lair. Down the 
mountain-side it pours, until Chilian cities and Californian 
sands are mirrored in the waters of the Pacific. Again its 
march is o'er the deep, until, amid the beauteous isles where 
day began, it resumes its glorious course of sunrise round 
the world." 

TRAVEL EDUCATIONAL. 

Travel is a school of trial ; and traversing Oriental lands 
requires considerable pluck, perseverance, and determina- 
tion. Though passing through diverse experiences, though 
subjected to strange mixtures of diet ; though often swelter- 
ing in torrid climes ; though scattering Spiritualistic litera- 
ture among missionaries and mandarins, Brahmans and 
Buddhists; though resorting to donkeys, camels, and ele- 
phants in the line of locomotion, as well as sedan-chairs, 
palanquins, railways, and ill-ventilated steamers, still we met 
— thanks to God and ministering spirits — with no serious 
disaster by land or sea. And, further, if we except custom- 



386 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

house annoyances, and the begging proclivities of pariahs 
and other lower classes in the East, all the races and tribes 
with whom we had to do, Maoris and Malays, Hindoos and 
Arabs, treated us with considerations of kindness and good 
will. 

Sitting quietly now in my library-room, and retrospecting 
the year and a half's absence consumed in this round-the- 
world pilgrimage, it seems hardly possible that I've seen the 
black aborigines of Australia, and the tattooed Maoris of 
New Zealand ; that I've witnessed the Hindoos burning 
their dead, and Persians praying in their fire-temples ; that 
I've gazed upon the frowning peak of Mount Sinai, and 
stood upon the summit of Cheops ; that I've conversed upon 
antiquity and religious subjects with Chinamen in Canton, 
Brahmans in Bengal, Parsees in Bombay, Arabs in Arabia, 
descendants of Pyramid-builders in Cairo, and learned rab- 
bis in Jerusalem ; that I've seen Greece in her shattered 
splendor, Albania with its castled crags, the Cyclades with 
their mantling traditions, and the Alps impearled and capped 
in crystal. Ceylon, too, in all its glory. 

The Spiritual seance that we held upon Mount Zion, in 
Jerusalem, when ancient spirits that personally knew Jesus 
after the " days of Herod the king " came and conversed 
with us, was to me the most consecrated hour of life. It 
was the door, the very gate to heaven, and that ajar ! The 
particulars and preparations for the seance, with the teach- 
ings, the inquiries, and responses, will be written out in the 
future. The time is not yet. We are living in the Second 
Coming, the continuous coming of Christ, a coming in 
judgment, in " power and great glory ! " 

As midnight hours are lighted by starry hosts ; as grasses 
and grains, fruits and yellowing harvests, first freshen, then 
come to maturity through the warmth and light of the sun, 
so comes the soul's salvation through Christ. " "We are 
saved by his life" (Rom. v. 10). Christianity — that is, 
the Christ-principles enunciated by Jesus Christ — stands 



EUEOPE AND ITS CITIES. 387 

upon an imperishable basis. With its everlasting arms of 
tenderness, it infolds the world, and pours forth a crystal 
flood of love as boundless as inexhaustible. 

It is difficult to realize that I've been in Bethlehem, 
walked in the Garden of Gethsemane, stood upon Mount 
Olives, bathed in the Jordan, breathed the air that fanned 
the serene face of Jesus when weary from travel under the 
burning skies of Palestine, looked thoughtfully upon the 
same hills and valleys clothed in Syrian spring-time with 
imperial lilies, and had the same images daguerreotyped upon 
my brain that impressed the sensitive soul of the " man of 
sorrows," — the teacher sent from God. 

As the voyage of mortal life must end some time, so must 
the record of these travels. If those who have followed me 
have been edified, and morally benefited, then am I satisfied. 
The "greatest word," said Confucius, "is 'reciprocity.'" 
Writing in haste, we may have committed some minor 
errors, or expressed opinions without sufficient research ; but 
the endeavor has been to treat the subjects referred to can- 
didly, bringing to our aid the most reliable information , 
and all to impart correct ideas of the millions peopling the 
East. 

Though each nation has its individuality, and each zone 
its peculiar attractions ; though there are choicer antiquities, 
and more classical lands ; though there are sunnier skies, and 
tropical fruits mellowing in one eternal summer, — still I ad- 
mire my native land. And yet standing upon the mount of 
vision, illumined by the principles of the Spiritual philoso- 
phy, I know no rich, no poor, no Asia, no America, no 
caste, no country ; but one divine humanity, resting upon 
the beating, loving bosom of God. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 

Bright is the world to-day ! 
But there are souls void of celestial fire, 
Benumbed to apathy, who in the mire 

Have fallen by the way. 
Shall I not rouse them to behold the light ? 

It was no more true in Bishop Heber's day than now, that 
" spicy- breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's Isle." I reached Co- 
lombo, the Capitol of Ceylon, from Australia, April 5, 1897, 
and stopped at the Grand Oriental Hotel, near the landing. 
But brief was my stay, as Mr. P. de Abrew, a cultured Bud- 
dhist gentleman called, and, accompanying him, I was taken 
in a rickshaw, a tidy, two-wheeled little carriage drawn by a 
Tamil coolie, to the Musaeus school for Buddhist girls. This 
is a splendid brick building in the cinnamon gardens. The 
school is conducted by Mrs. Maria M. Higgins, formerly a 
resident of Washington, D. C. Much of the financial pros- 
perity of this school is due to the generosity of Wilton 
Hack, Esq., of Western Australia. It was a pleasure to me 
to wedge a brick into this magnificent structure dedicated to 
the education of Buddhist girls, many of whom were orphans. 
Here I was a guest — feeling at home. Mr. Abrew donated 
the land for this school-building, surrounded by tropical shrub- 
bery and semi-shaded by evergreen, bread-fruit and cocoanut 
palms. If I could say but one impressive word to Ceylon, 
Burmah and India, that word should be education. 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 389 

Be it said in honor of Col. H. S. Olcott, a noted American 
writer and author whom I well knew a quarter of a century 
since, that he has organized over one hundred schools in Cey- 
lon for elementary instruction in English, for the propagation 
of the higher education and for the elucidation of the doc- 
trines of Buddhism. Sectarian missionaries are not deeply 
in love with the Colonel, nor his Theosophical Buddhism. 

It was in Chittendon, Vt., the home of the Eddy mediums, 
that I first met Col. Olcott. Madame Blavatsky was there 
also- both naming Spiritualists known as "investigators." 
Though a Theosophist now, he has never ruthlessly smitten 
the rock, Spiritualism, from whence he was hewn. All true 
Theosophists are Spiritualists, and very many Spiritualists 
are Theosophists. The phenomena of both demonstrate a 
future existence ; and they both toil to overthrow supersti- 
tion, bigotry, Athanasian and Calvinistic creeds, and to usher 
in the reign of reason and the acknowledged brotherhood of 
all the races. 

Upon introducing me to an audience of Priests and Bud- 
dhist students for an address in the Ananda College, 
Colombo, Col. Olcott very appreciating!}' said : " It was Dr. 
Peebles' book of ' Buddhism and Christianity Face to Face,' 
published after his first tour around the world, that gave me 
an introduction to the Buddhist High Priest, Sumangala ; 
ultimating later, in my visit to, and subsequent educational 
work, upon the island." Often do we write wiser than we 
know. No good thought dies — no truth perishes. 

ceylon's characteristics. 

This lovely island in remote antiquity was called in Sans- 
krit, Lanka, and seems to have been first mentioned in that 
famous Hindoo poem, " Ramayana." Its length from north 
to south is less than 300 miles. It has an area of something 
over 25,000 square miles, and may well be called the gem of 
the sea and the pearl of the ocean. 

Ceylon was doubtless peopled in a later period from India, 



390 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the legends of antiquity testifying that at one time the island 
was accessible from India by land at low water. In the Sing- 
halese we plainly see a blending of two or more races, the 
majority coming from northern India, bringing with them the 
Sanskrit; while the Tamils came from South India. Col- 
ombo, the capital, has a population of about 130,000, a mixt- 
ure of Singhalese, Hindoos, Parsees, Arabs, Afghans and 
other races, clad in almost every costume conceivable. 

The lowest race, the Rock Veddahs of the island, are 
nearly extinct. They do not live or build houses in trees as 
has been reported, but they live in grass-made huts and caves. 
They are very shy of civilized people. They use only the 
bow and the arrow to kill their game. They eat bats, rats 
and lizards ; roast wild pigs and monkeys are equally con- 
sidered by them the choicest delicacies. The Valley Ved- 
dahs are a higher class, yet very low in the moral scale. They 
intermarry. These aborigines will soon fade away in conso- 
nance with the law — the survival of the fittest. 

Saturday, April 10th. Called in the morning upon the 
United States Consul. His wife is a Singhalese. In the after- 
noon went to a Buddhist funeral. The deceased was a young 
lady connected with the higher classes. The cemetery was 
about one mile from the Musaeus school. There was a very 
large concourse of people, and among them, twenty-three 
Buddhist priests clad in their yellow robes. The mourners 
followed the corpse borne by friends to within some thirty 
yards of the grave, when they stopped and commenced weep- 
ing, mourning, groaning and agonizing in a most pitiable 
manner. When ! Oh, when ! will mortals learn to differen- 
tiate the body from the risen and immortal soul ? A corpse 
is only a lifeless shape of disorganizing putridity — a deserted 
shell — a vacated house to be speedily burned. 

The grave was rimmed around a foot or more with beauti- 
ful flowers on each side. The priests upon reaching the grave 
formed a circle around it, holding in their hands many yards 
of soft white muslin, a portion of it resting upon the metal- 




Megettnwatte, the Controversialist. 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 391 

lie coffin, glittering like silver under shimmering sunbeams. 
Then the high priest offered prayers in the ancient Pali, the 
other priests responding. Then followed chants — chantings 
of life, of death and the consolations of the future. Perfumed 
sacred water was poured into all of the priests' hands, and 
two earthen bowls of water were broken at the head and foot 
of the grave, symbolizing as the water poured out, the release 
of the spirit from the broken, buried body. Several of the 
priests as well as Col. Olcott made short speeches. The 
friends of the deceased filled up the grave with their 
ungloved hands and covered it with flowers. All Buddhist 
priests are cremated ; while the masses both cremate and 
bury. 

Sunday, 12th, went with Mr. de Abrew and the Musaeus 
school teachers out to the Kotahena temple — the temple of 
Migettuwatte, the famous preacher and debater. Standing in 
his pulpit just outside of the unique, yet gorgeous temple, in 
which the image of Buddah, twenty-seven feet in length, lies 
reclining on the right side with a circled aureola of golden 
rays around his head, such as we see around the heads of 
Christian saints and martyrs, I tried to picture to myself 
the discussion that this Buddhist priest Migettuwatte held 
with the Rev. Mr. Silva, upon the comparative merits of 
Buddhism and Christianity. It was the consensus of opin- 
ion that the Rev. Silva was signally routed. The priest was 
the best scholar and far the most eloquent. The alleged 
miracles connected with Buddhism are almost infinitely more 
numerous and astounding than those connected with Chris- 
tianity. Why, when Buddha made his reported third visit 
to Adams Peak in Ceylon, he left his footprint upon the 
rock — and it remains unto this day. 

TEMPLES IN ROCKS. 

Accompanied by a Singhalese youth, I went out to Aluxi- 
hdra, meaning dwelling-place of monks. It was at Matale, 
the terminus of the railway leading from Colombo up through 



392 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Kandy. It was some three miles from the station to this 
famous rock temple. We rode in springless bullock carts, 
drawn by large hump-shouldered bullocks. They go on a 
good trot. We passed many poor-looking, palm-thatched 
cottages ; saw natives by their huts, eating their dried fish 
and rice with their fingers ; jogged along by vacated coffee- 
tree plantations and rice paddies. Now we have passed the 
gate from the main road, and following the winding way, we 
are at the foot of the great rock temple, the crevices of which 
shelter a million bats. Here is what corresponds to a church 
edifice cut into an immense granite boulder, the workmanship 
of which would do honor to the sculptors of ancient Greece. 
In this stone temple of worship is a massive image of Bud- 
dha, with a sevenfold rainbowed circle around his head. 
The walls are covered with old religious carvings and paint- 
ings of Buddha's conflicts with demons, of his fast friend 
Ananda, of many saints and their temptations b} r demons. 
There were several priests in this stone temple and they 
kindly showed us the nine points of bending and bowing in 
Buddhistic worship. On the highest point of this rock is the 
legendary imprint of Buddha's foot, fully six feet in length. 

ANUEADHAPUEA. 

Ceylon abounds in buried cities and ruins, some of which 
are pre-historic. Among these are remnants of antiquity 
near the Aluxihara temple at Dambulla. But these pale 
away into insignificance compared with those at Anuradha- 
pura and vicinity. Approaching, you first see the so-called 
brazen palace, which is a "vast collection of monolithic 
granite pillars 1,600 in number, standing about 12 feet out 
of the ground, and arranged in lines of 40 each way. The 
corner pillars are massive in size. They were probably all 
" coated with chunam and covered with copper." The foun- 
dations of this palace were laid by King Dutugemunu in the 
second century, B. C, and supported a building nine stories 
in height, containing 1,000 dormitories for priests and some 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 393 

other apartments. These were the palmy days of Buddhism. 
The roof of this magnificent monastery was of brass, the walls, 
says the native historian, were embellished and resplendent 
with gems, the great hall was supported on golden pillars 
resting on lions ; in the centre was an ivory throne, with a 
golden sun and a silver moon on either side, and above all 
gleamed and glittered the imperial " Chatta," the white 
canopy of dominion and peace. This monastery was recon- 
structed and reduced to seven stories in height in the year 
140 B. C. Just south of the brazen palace is the " sacred " 
road along which the pilgrims have come for over two thou- 
sand years with their offerings to the shrine of their religion. 
The offerings are mostly flowers and gifts for the poor. Near 
this road is the celebrated Bo-tree, the oldest historical tree in 
the world. It was planted 245 years before Christ, and accord- 
ingly is now 2,130 years old. This tree, though bearing no 
fruit, has a very beautiful foliage. The tree is considered 
sacred, because under it in India, Gautama sat when he 
attained Buddha-hood. The chronicles of this tree are con- 
sidered authentic, all dynasties considering it sacred. It is 
surrounded by a grove of palms. The leaves that fall from 
it are highly esteemed as relics by the thousands of pilgrims 
who come here to worship during the full moons of June and 
July. All about are figures of Buddha, monolithic pillars, 
medicine baths, dagobas, statues leaning or fallen, ponderous 
cisterns, ancient shrines crumbling with the weight of weary 
centuries, and costly carved ascetic cells — clustering acres 
upon acres of ruins, revealing the ancient grandeur and 
glory of Ceylon. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF CIVILIZATION. 

There are written characters in Ceylon antedating the 
Pali and the most ancient Sanskrit. Professor Sayce is 
forced to admit that the language spoken in Chaldea was the 
parent of the Egyptian, proving that a high state of civiliza- 
tion prevailed in that region three thousand years before the 



394 AROUND THE WORLD. , 

elate assigned by Archbishop Usher to the Mosaic so-called 
creation of the world. Pity be to our Bible worshippers ! 

In the Nippur explorations there has been found a library 
containing no fewer than thirty thousand clay tablets, these 
records having been inscribed nearly five thousand years ago, 
and Professor Hilprecht, who has been engaged in decipher- 
ing these enduring records, declares that he can no longer 
" hesitate to date the founding of the temple of Bel and the 
first settlement in Nippur somewhere between 6000 and 7000 
B. C, possibly even earlier." Sargon and his son, Naram Sin, 
can be shown to have reigned in Babylon as far back as 3800 
B.C., and these two monarchs, it is now proved, " come at the 
end of a long preceding historical period," and their annals 
" have been verified by contemporaneous documents " ; so 
that " henceforward, Sargon and Naram Sin, instead of be- 
longing to the gra}^ dawn of time, must be regarded as repre- 
sentatives of the golden age of Babylonian history." There 
is valid evidence to show that " the temple of Mul-lil (in the 
city of Nippur) must have been founded at least as early as 
6000 B. C." ; and it is impossible to say how far back in the 
history of the world later discoveries may carry us. It is 
now clear, however, that " for unnumbered ages Babylonia 
had been the centre of culture for the whole of Western 
Asia, and that at times it had been the political centre of 
Western Asia as well." These tablets elucidate the history 
of the world eight and ten thousand years ago. 

" The American expedition," says Professor Schlesinger, 
" was fortunate enough to exhume the library at Nippur, 
and the thirty-two thousand tablets have gone to the United 
States. The nature of the collection may be inferred from 
the following list of its contents : Syllabarias, letters, chro- 
nological lists, historical fragments, astronomical and reli- 
gious texts, building inscriptions, votive tablets, inventories, 
tax lists, plans of estates, contracts, etc." 



R 




A Buddhist Priest. 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 395 

PECULIARITIES OF BUDDHIST PRIESTS. 

The Buddhism of Ceylon is not in perfect accord with the 
Buddhism of Japan and China, although they agree in what 
may be denominated the essentials. Before a Buddhist stu- 
dent can be ordained he must go before the chief priest and 
twenty elders, all robed in white garments, and answer the 
following questions : 

1. Are you afflicted with leprosy, ulcers, cutaneous erup- 
tions, consumption, or possessed with demons ? 

2. Are you free from the bonds of slavery? Are you 
involved in debt ? Have you obtained the consent of your 
parents? Have you completed your twentieth year? Are 
you provided with a cup and a priestly garment ? 

If answered in the affirmative, then his hair is shaven 
off, his body perfumed with sandal powder and other deli- 
cious odors. 

Priests dress in yellow robes — a cloth around their loins 
to the ankles, and another of deep yellow, several yards 
long, thrown over their left shoulders and reaching nearly to 
the ground. Generally they wear no shoes ; a very few wear 
sandals. They shave each other. They take no money for 
services. They live by alms-asking. Their feet are hand- 
some and their eyes expressive and bright. They are celi- 
bates. They eat but twice a day. It is considered great 
merit to feed or give to a priest. They bless the giver. 

The Buddhists' Sundays are governed by the moon, hence 
they assemble four times a month, or at the moon's changes, 
for religious instructions. They have one yearly season of 
devotion that corresponds somewhat to Lent. This lasts 
three months, the priests leaving their temples and going 
among the people preaching the gospel of Lord Buddha. 

In all temples there are one or more images of Buddha. 
Lights are kept burning. They also burn incense upon cer- 
tain occasions, sprinkle holy water and tinkle a little bell. 

Generally a Buddhist priest has a palm-leaf fan in his 



396 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

hand. In traveling he must not see more than the length of 
a bullock before him. Gazing about is considered irreligious. 
ISlo priest must sit privately on a seat with a woman secluded 
from sight. He must not address a woman in more than 
five or six sentences without an intelligent witness present. 
Every fifteen days the priests assemble for a lecture from the 
High Priest. Their rules of discipline are rigid. For drunk- 
enness, eating at night, sleeping on high beds, accepting gold 
or silver, wearing jewelry, or using perfumes, they are liable 
to discipline, and, if persisted in, expulsion. 

A priest never bows to persons, as he is supposed to be 
superior to man. Priests never worship the gods ; but when 
they preach they invite the gods to listen. Many of them 
understand medicine as taught in their Pali books. No one 
must sit on a higher seat in a congregation than the priest. 
He sits while preaching, the people standing. Buddhists 
have no fixed creed. The northern and southern sections 
of Buddhism agree in all essentials. 

KANDY, RUMBUKKANNA AND THE JUNGLE. 

It is seventy miles from Colombo to Kandy, the old capi- 
tal of the Kandian kings. This city of twenty-five thousand 
inhabitants is half embowered in tropical foliage, and sur- 
rounded by evergreen hills, mirrored in an artificial lake. 
Its famous Dalada Temple was built to hold Buddha's tooth 
— a sham tooth, as every scientist and pathologist knows. 
Adams Peak may be seen from the Kandian Hills ; while 
the fine sanitarium of Neura Eiliya, nearly three thousand 
feet above the level of the sea, is only fifty miles distant. 
This is a noted resort of the rich man and the artist, the 
sick, the lame and the lazy. The climate here is not only 
temperate but cool and bracing. 

Left Kandy for Rumbukkanna on the 16th, to meet Col. 
Olcott, who was to address a school by a noted temple out in 
the jungle. When the colonel reached the station there was 
a crowd awaiting him. When he alighted the people shouted 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 397 

and the elephants were made to kneel down, then rise up and 
trumpet in his honor. A Singhalese crowd followed him to 
the Government Rest House, where I was breakfasting. In 
the mean time deputations came in from districts ten and fif- 
teen miles distant. They met in front of our hotel, a motley 
crowd, and entertained us with native music — I think they 
called it music, certainly it was noise. Mr. Subasinnah, a 
gentlemanly Singhalese, brought his Buddhist Sunday-school 
class before us, the calisthenic and gymnastic exercises of 
which very much resembled the children's progressive lyce- 
ums of America. These native children, though brown- 
skinned, are bright, active and handsome. The exercises at 
the Government House concluded, with their accompania- 
ments of flags waving, tom-toms, hand-drums and devil- 
dancings, the full procession was formed for a five miles' 
march into the jungle. I was dumped into a seatless, 
springless bullock-cart with the colonel and three Buddhist 
priests. The packing was too close for comfort. We move 
on, led by waving banners, elephants and donkeys, now over 
a hill, now under a decorated arch, now through a grove of 
wild cocoanut-trees, devil-dancers with jingling bells upon 
their ankles before, devil-dancers behind and cheering all 
along the line. No artist could have transferred this scene 
to canvas. 

MOUNTED UPON AN ELEPHANT. 

Weary of the jolting, uncushioned cart, it was gravely 
proposed that I take refuge upon the largest of the ele- 
phants in line. It was agreed to. He was a monster of an 
animal. Lying down, as commanded by his owner, I mounted 
him with some native assistance. Already was he burdened 
with five passengers all riding astride — no houdah ! The 
march continues. We are in the thick of the jungle. The 
elephantine movements of this great animal were only com- 
parable to a steamer rocking, struggling in a howling mon- 
soon: It was soon a question of bullock-cart or elephant, 
which ? Sitting astride his nearly square back and fearing 



398 AROUND THE WORLD. ' 

there might possibly be two of me soon, I dismounted, and 
betook myself to the cart again ! 

Here we are now at an old, gorgeously-decorated temple 
out in the jungle. Met at the door-way and blessed by the 
priests, we passed on and out into an emerald-carpeted field, 
where, under the waving boughs of a majestic Bo-tree there 
had been erected a platform festooned with wreaths and flow- 
ers of seemingly a thousand hues. There was an audience 
before us of some two or three thousand. All were sitting. 
The scene was entrancing. Col. Olcott, at his best, deliv- 
ered an eloquent address upon education, brotherhood and 
the beauties of ethical Buddhism. It was loudly cheered. 
To make practical his address, the colonel drank from a 
bowl of water brought to him by one of the lowest caste 
persons present, to show the true, fraternal spirit of Budd- 
hism. 

What do you say ? — caste among the Buddhists, when 
one of the first teachings of Guatama Buddha was, " Down 
with caste ! " But remember that Ceylon was conquered 
by the Hindoos, who introduced and enforced the caste 
system, the remnants of which have not yet been exter- 
minated. 

Introduced by Colonel Olcott as an old American friend of 
his, imbued with the ethics of Buddhism, the brotherhood of 
man and all humanitarian reforms, I addressed this great mass- 
meeting of Buddhists upon the schools, manners, customs and 
religions of America, and never did I address a more quiet or 
appreciative audience. The meeting was continued till the 
next morning, two Buddhist priests preaching and chanting 
alternately all the long night. Asiatics are anxious to know 
the truth. 

On our way back to Rambukkanna, near evening-time, we 
were overtaken by a terrific thunder-storm, the rain pouring 
in torrents and leaking down through our palm-thatched 
bullock-cart; one of the bullocks balked; one of the rude 
vehicles upset ; another broke down because of the flooded 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. ' 399 

road-way. Oh, the times and terrors of these pilgrims! 
Dripping, hungry and weary, we felt like singing : 

" Our crosses are many, our crowns are few." 
THE PRINCE-PRIEST. 

Seldom does royalty become humility. Seldom do princes 
assume the garb of beggars and go about doing good. In a 
palm-embowered suburb of Colombo is the temple of the 
prince-priest of Siam. He speaks fine English. He shrinks 
from no argument with missionaries. He is very social and 
wears his Buddhistic robe of yellow very gracefully. A 
prince, a scholar, an ambassador to St. James and nearly half 
the courts of Europe, he had seen enough of the folly, decep- 
tion, illusion and hollowness of the world; and coming to 
the conclusion that he was a soul, he renounced the world — 
the world and its illusions, and became a Buddhist monk. 
He is now calm, serene, happy — consecrating his life to the 
diffusion of Buddhism, to doing good, to begging of the rich 
to give to the poor ! 

TEAS OF CHINA AND CEYLON. 

" Which are the preferable teas " is a common inquiry — 
" those of China, or of Ceylon ? " The coffee plantations of 
the Ceylonese have been largely supplanted by tea-plants and 
shrubs, owing to a disease among the coffee trees. Tea-rais- 
ing is very profitable in the warm, humid climate of Ceylon. 
The tea-plant would grow ten or fifteen feet high if left to 
itself ; but the shrubs are kept clipped down to within one 
and two feet from the ground. Only the young and tender- 
est top leaves are picked. Poor Tamil coolie women do the 
most of the picking. A large basket is suspended upon 
their backs, and the leaves are nipped off and tossed behind 
them into these baskets. Their only dress is a loin-cloth. 
They sweat profusely. The manufacturing establishments 
for preparing, drying, sorting and boxing interested me 



400 AROUND THE WORLD. . 

deeply. Many are the processes, one of which is the fer- 
mentation of the moist tea leaves ; another is passing them 
over and through a copper screen ; another is the stirring 
with the coolie's hands while drying ; another is the stamp- 
ing them down (when dried) in boxes and chests by the 
Tamil coolie boys' bare, perspiring feet. At the Matale 
manufactory the tea leaves ready for sorting and packing 
were scattered over the floor, half an inch deep in some 
places, with half-naked, barefooted, feet-sweating coolies 
treading around in them, soon to be steeped and sipped as 
a delicious beverage by Western nations. Tea leaves as a 
drink are useless, expensive, astringing, stimulating and 
medicinal. Theine is used as a medicine. Paris has a large 
hospital for old, nervously broken-down tea-topers. " Which 
of the Oriental teas, then, is the best ? " The answer is, those 
that are the least injurious, unhealthy, dirty and nasty. Take 
your choice, and tan your stomachs with theine ! O ye tea- 
toper slaves of the nineteenth century ! 

THE KING OF SIAM IN CEYDON. 

As fate or fortune would have it, I was in this evergreen 
isle of temples and spices when the Siamese King on his 
way to the Queen's Jubilee visited Ceylon. Great prepara- 
tions were made for his reception. Through the kindness of 
my old-time friend whom I first met at the " Eddy mediums,'* 
in Vermont, and who stands very high among the Buddhists 
of Ceylon and the Brahmins of India for the impetus he has 
given to education and free thought, Col. Henry S. Olcott, 
I was secured a seat within the magnificently decorated pavil- 
ion (by paying ten rupees) only a few feet from the king's 
chair. He walked up under the handsomely trimmed and 
flowered-covered arch with the strutting English officials, 
dressed in a plain, American-like suit. No sword, sash or 
epaulettes, not even a finger ring. Sensible king, said I. 
Conducted to his chair upon the platform, amid the music of 
Buddhist priests' chanting, he performed some religious cere- 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 401 

monies, received addresses and replied to them in botli Pali 
and English. 

I had a pleasant five minutes' chat with him in the 
queen's house. Upon leaving, and telling him that I was 
travelling around the world gathering materials for a book, 
he most courteously said : " If you come to my country 
I will give you every facility for collecting such mate- 
rials." 

The king is a genial, sunny-faced gentleman of, say, forty 
years of age, with not a bit of swell or starch about him. 
He is as popular in his kingdom as was President Lincoln in 
America. Educated in London and Paris, he speaks fine 
English, is straight as an arrow, yellow-skinned and exceed- 
ingly affable. 

ASOKA BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

What relation does Buddhism bear to Christianity ? is an 
ever-recurring question. The numerous inscriptions of King 
Asoka, who, reigning over forty years, died at the ripe old 
age of eighty, 223 B. C, unquestionably was the best and 
the wisest of the old Indian sovereigns. The inscriptions of 
his time — a Bible on rocks — are affording a rich harvest for 
archeologists and antiquarians. Some of Asoka's edicts 
remain to this day chisel-imprinted on pillared rocks and in 
old stone caves. Explorers and archeologists have just dis- 
covered among the ruins of Rampuwar two Asoka pillars, 
nearly imbedded in soil and sand, one of which contained 
important inscriptions. 

These inscriptions, in either Sanskrit or Pali, have been 
largely copied and translated. Some few were too defaced 
to be clearly read. The translations relating to govern- 
mental commands, with moral and religious advice to both 
Brahmins and Buddhists, are of a most interesting character. 
No interpolations can here be charged. Defying the canker- 
ing tooth of time, these inscriptions are genuine. 



402 AROUND THE WORLD. 

WHAT IS THEIR MORAL IMPORT? 

They breathe the spirit of toleration to unbelievers and 
brotherly love to all. Buddhists have never persecuted for 
religious opinion's sake. In this, Buddhism puts Christianity 
to shame. These Asoka edicts prohibited the sacrifice of ani- 
mals either for food or for religious ceremonies. They or- 
dered shade-trees and fruit-trees to be planted along the 
great thoroughfares, and wells to be dug along such and 
such distances to quench the thirst of travelers along the 
highways. They enjoined obedience to parents, respect and 
reverence to the aged, kindness to animals, frequent bathings, 
and forbearance to all other religions. Query — How much 
has the world advanced ethically since the Buddhistic era of 
Asoka ? 

WHAT IS THE HISTORIC IMPORT OF THESE EDICTS? 

Much, very much ! To use the language of Hon. P. C. 
Chattefyii, judge of the High Court, Calcutta, author of 
" Asoka and His Edicts," " this Indian king, fired with the 
missionary spirit, sent missionaries to preach the doctrines 
and moral precepts of Buddhism to all the civilized nations of 
the West. Egypt, Syria, Cyrene, Epirus and Macedon were 
visited by them, as the thirteenth rock inscription edict 
shows. The Western kings with whom Asoka made treaties 
were Antiochus of Syria, Ptolemy of Egypt, Margus of 
Cyrene, Antigonus of Macedon and Alexander of Epirus. 
These kings, over 200 years before Christ, permitted Budd- 
hists to preach and teach in their countries, the fruits of 
which appeared in the rise of the Therapeutse of Egypt, 
the Essenes in Syria and Palestine, and the Neo-Zoroastri- 
ans and Neo-Pythagoreans — all of whom were Buddhists 
under different names. Thus the teachings of Buddha were 
carried to the remotest corners of the ancient civilized world." 
And so Judaism and Buddhism formed the menstruum — the 
religious and ethical soil out of which grew primitive Chris- 
tianity. In this there was no miracle. 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 403 

Many of the rock edicts of Asoka, chronological, ethical 
and religious, are still standing, and can be seen by any one 
who will take the trouble to visit them. They have not 
been revised and re -revised by priests, like the Christians' 
Bible. 

Already thirty-nine of these edicts have been discovered 
and translated. Some have partially perished by the cor- 
roding action of time. Others were defaced by the vandal 
Mohammedans. Arabs by descent, wherever they con- 
quered they destroyed temples, inscriptions and manu- 
scripts. They forced their religion by the sword. When 
conquering Northern India they compelled thousands upon 
thousands of old men to submit to circumcision. They are 
to-day fanatics, bigots, fatalists and polygamists. True, 
there are good men among them — good in spite of their 
Islamism. I write what I know, for as a United States Con- 
sul I lived among them for years and know them thor- 
oughly. They are the Jews — the baser sort of warlike 
Jews — of Asia and Africa. 

Explorers and archeologists expect to find, in the near 
future, more of these Asoka edicts in Afghanistan, and the 
countries north of the present India, that this Buddhist king 
once governed. Just recently they found and deciphered one 
of these inscriptions in Mysore. And so, step by step, the 
long half-hidden past is yielding up its treasures ; and, being 
resurrected into the living present, solving many of the 
knotty problems of history. 

Those wishing to know the genius, status and progress of 
Buddhism should procure Col. H. H. Olcott's " Buddhist 
Catechism," the thirty-third edition of which, approved by 
the High Priest Sumangala of . Ceylon, has just been pub- 
lished. In the suburbs of Colombo I visited the temple and 
stood in the pulpit where Priest Mitteguttawate used to 
preach, and whose discussion with the Rev. de Silva formed 
the foundation of my book on " Buddhism and Christianity 
Face to Face." 



404 AROUND THE WORLD. 

BUDDHISM AS IT IS. 

Theology, in an ecclesiastical sense, bears little or no rela- 
tion to the life and teachings of Guatama Buddha. Budd- 
hism is benign and ethical, rather than dogmatic. It is 
based upon four " noble truths," so called : 

1. The existence of suffering. 

2. The cause of this suffering. 

3. The cessation of suffering. 

4. The eightfold path that leads to the cessation of suffering. 

This eightfold path consists of these steps upward : 1, a 
right comprehension of life ; 2, right and high aspirations ; 
3, right and appropriate speech; 4, upright moral conduct; 
5, a befitting way of earning a livelihood ; 6, endeavor in 
doing good ; 7, intellectuality to enlighten others, and, 8, 
purity of life. 

Birth, say Buddhists, is suffering, old age is suffering, 
disease is suffering, and death is suffering. The causes of 
this suffering are desire, selfishness, lust. This seeking for 
happiness, this craving for worldly enjoyment, this strug- 
gling for satisfaction, for power, for fame — in brief, this 
heart-clamoring for existence. It is these selfish lusts for 
worldly gratification that lead to and necessitate incarnation 
after incarnation back into human bodies. 

Those who wisely enter the path and persistently follow 
it make an end of sin — an end of suffering, and so avoid 
re-births back into mortality. 

This is the formula in which those Buddhists take ref- 
uge who follow the path by practising the precepts of Lord 
Buddha : 

" I take my refuge in the Buddha. — [The Enlightened One.] 
I take my refuge in the Dharma. — [The pure religion.] 
I take my refuge in the Sangha." — [The Buddhist Church.] 

There are, say Buddhist priests, three sins of the body, 
four sins of the tongue, and three sins of the mind. " The 



CEYLON AND ITS BUDDHISTS. 405 

sins of the body are murder, theft and adultery; of the 
tongue, lying, slander, abuse and gossip ; of the mind, envy, 
hatred and error." 

The ten commandments condensed are — 

I. — Kill not, but have regard for all life. 
II. — Steal not, neither rob, but help every one to have the fruits of 
his labors. 

III. — Abstain from impurity, and lead lives of chastity. 

IV. — Lie not, but be truthful. Speak the truth fearlessly, yet in a 

loving heart. 
V. — Invent not evil reports, neither repeat them. Carp not, but 
look for the good in your fellow-beings. 
VI. — Swear not, but speak with propriety and dignity. 
VII. — Waste not your time in idle gossip, but speak words of wisdom 

or keep silent. 
VIII. — Covet not, nor envy, but rejoice at the good fortune of others. 
IX. — Cleanse your heart of malice, and cherish no hatred, not even 
against your enemies. 
X. — Free your mind from ignorance, practise kindness and seek to 
learn the truth — these lead to life eternal. 

Further quoting from the Maha-Bodhi publication, the 
seven jewels of the law which united form the bright dia- 
dem of Nirvana are purity, calmness, comprehension, love, 
wisdom, perfection and divine enlightenment. 

The most prominent priest of Ceylon is High Priest Wel- 
ligama, Shri Sumangala. He is a most genial and courteous 
old man, delighting to aid one in solving the knottiest prob- 
lems" connected with Buddhism. There is a revival of Budd- 
hism in Ceylon and other Oriental countries. Some of her 
monks are afire with the missionary spirit. Already H. 
Dharmapala, Secretary of the Maha-Bodi Society, is in 
America teaching that gospel of gentleness and mercy that 
distinguishes Buddhism from other Oriental religions. 

Buddhism and Brahminism are becoming better under- 
stood continually by the Western world. The exponents of 
each are also on better terms. Hence that progressive Hin- 
doo, P. C. Moozomdar, in an address delivered last year in 



406 AROUND THE WORLD. . 

Galle, Ceylon, said : " I do not ask you, my Buddhistic 
friends, to forsake Buddhism, but to give it a new spirit 
and bring it under a new dispensation. There must in the 
future be a new Hinduism, a new Islamism, a new Christian- 
ity, and a new Buddhism, that all these religions may mix and 
mingle to form one universal fresh progressive religious dispen- 
sation, wherein all sects may behold what is best in their own 
faiths, and above all behold the eternal countenance of the 
Giver and Father of all truth, all goodness and all humanity.'* 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 

" Afar down I see the Infinite Past ; 
I know I was even there. 

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, 
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. 
Long I was hugged close — long and long. 
Immense have been the preparations for me, 
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me ; 
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen. 
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings ; 
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. 
Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me. 
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it, 
For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
The long slow strata were piled to rest it on, 
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. 
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me : 
Now I stand upon this spot with my soul. 
I am soul," 

" Which is the finest country in the world ? " " Which 
would you prefer to live in?" are the ever-recurring ques- 
tions that I have to answer. The matchless Max Miiller in 
his "What can India Teach Us?" says: "If I were to 
look over the whole world to find out the country most 
richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that 
nature can bestow — in some parts a very paradise on earth 
— I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky 
the human mind has most fully developed some of its choic- 
est gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems 



408 AROUND THE WORLD. 

of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well 
deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato 
and Kant — I should point to India. . . . But I am thinking 
of India as it was, two thousand, it may be three thousand, 
years ago." 

Nations, empires rise and fall like the waves of the ocean. 
Of this fact, India is a standing demonstration. The India 
of the present, famine-scourged and plague-stricken, was the 
poorest country I saw during my travels. " The English," 
say these struggling millions, " have by taxation and bad 
legislation squeezed the financial life out of us. We are 
helpless in the hands of a giant." 

British India, including the French, Portuguese and other 
settlements, numbers about three hundred millions. The 
southern regions of this immense country are intensely hot 
a portion of the season ; but in the northern elevated regions 
the climate is temperate. Here, and especially in Southern 
India, there are three seasons : the hot, the rainy, and the par- 
tially temperate. I was there this last season in June, at the 
beginning of the rainy season. The missionaries had fled to 
the mountains. 

During the southwest monsoons the rains fall in torrents 
on the western coast; while the northeast monsoons bring 
rain to the eastern portion of the country. If the monsoons 
fail to bring rain, famine is sure to follow. Rain-falls in the 
Deccan are about 20 inches, Madras 52 inches ; while up on 
the Khasia hills there is an average of 610 inches per year. 
Trees and vegetation in this country are unrivalled in 
variety, richness and beauty. It is not strange that there 
were originally tree-worshippers in this land of eternal 
verdure. 

RELIGIONS AND LANGUAGES OF INDIA. 

This country is so extensive that a description of one por- 
tion will not always fit that of another — hence the seeming 
contradictions of travelers. 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 409 

Hindooism with its different gods is professed by some- 
thing like three-fourths of the population. Jain ism, a com- 
pound of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and numbering five 
million, abounds mostly in Western India. The Jains had a 
representative to the World's Parliament of Religions in 
Chicago. The Brahmins, the Orthodox Brahmins, had no 
representative. No Brahmin priest can leave India without 
losing caste. 

About one-sixth of the people of India are Mohammedans. 
They are far the most numerous in the northern part of India. 
When conquering a portion of India they destroyed the sacred 
books of the Hindoos and demolished some of their most maof- 
nificent temples. Arabs in origin, they are religious bigots, 
zealots, fatalists, polygamists and political vandals. 

The sect of Manaks live on the banks of the Satlaj and 
number about two millions. They are declining. 

The Parsees, descendants of the fire-worshippers of Persia, 
and believers in Zoroaster, are found mostly on the western 
coast of India and especially in the regions of Bombay. 

There is a sect in Southern India called Jacobite Christians ; 
possibly a million of Roman Catholics, mostly on the Malabar 
coast, descendants of Syrian Christians ; and in all some- 
thing like rive hundred thousand Protestant Christians in all 
India. It is safe to say that Christianity, notwithstanding 
its immense financial expenditures, has scarcely produced a 
ripple upon the religious consciousness of India. 

There are as many as thirty languages spoken in India. 
These branch out into many mixed dialects. Ancient Hin- 
doo settlers in this country — the Aryans — introduced the 
Sanskrit. The Assam, Nepal, Kashmir and others are de- 
rived from the Sanskrit. There is a revival of the study of 
the ancient Sanskrit at the present time in India ; and the 
same may be said of the English. Every Hindoo boy of 
ordinary intelligence is anxious to learn the English tongue, 
hoping for employment and better pay. 

The languages of Southern India are grouped under the 



410 AROUND THE WORLD. 

name of the Dra vidian. This was the language of the origi- 
nal inhabitants. The Tamil, Telegu and the Kanarese, 
spoken generally in Madras and through the Madras Presi- 
dency, are outputs from the Dravidian. The Gondi is spoken 
by a rude tribe called Gondes. in Central India. The Snidi 
and the Kach tongues come largely from the Persian and the 
Arabic. The Pushtu is the language of the Afghans in India. 
The Tamil is spoken through almost the entire country south 
of Madras. The Dravidians were a darker-skinned people 
than the Aryans. Babel is the proper word to apply to the 
languages of India. A dozen different interpreters are 
necessary in traveling through this vast country. 

About three-fourths of the population of India are sub- 
jects of the British Crown. There are several feudatory 
States under British protection, paying tribute ; and there 
are three Independent States : Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. 
The more intelligent people of India everywhere from, the 
cool mountains north to the torrid heat of the south are 
politically restless. They have aspirations for more liberty, 
and for national unity, with the privileges of self-govern- 
ment. 

THE MADRAS PRESIDENCY. 

Madras, the largest city in Southern India, has a popula- 
tion of five hundred thousand. The government buildings 
are grand and imposing. Under their shadow is the most 
abject poverty. The city with its suburbs extends nearly 
nine miles along the coast. It has no good harbor. Certain 
lines of steamers do not stop during the monsoon months. 
Blacktown, the crowded portion, is within the old city 
walls. One of the main roads leading out of the city con- 
ducts one to Saint Thomas Mount, where, according to tra- 
dition, St. Thomas, the Apostle of India, preached, and, later, 
was martyred. Being one of a party from Adyar, we richly 
enjoyed a visit to this historic mountain. 

Riding down from Adyar, through the city, and especially 
through Blacktown, one sees women working side by side 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 411 

with the men, toiling upon the roads, digging post-holes, 
clearing away street-filth, shoveling up newly dropped cow 
chips, and doing all kinds of the lowest drudgery. In 
another portion of the city you see milk-and-water carriers 
with great jars suspended from an elastic bow over the shoul- 
ders ; men dressing their hair, cleansing their ears, cutting 
their toe-nails, scouring their teeth, rubbing their bodies with 
oil, or being shaved, before everybody's gaze. The bathing 
in the tanks, of men, women and children, the washing, by 
pounding the garments across great stones, the half-naked 
bodies and uncovered heads of over one-half of the native 
population, the entirely naked children and the bullock carts, 
where the driver sits on a projection between the heads of 
the little hump-shouldered animals — all present a living 
and most interesting, if not uplifting j>anorama, to the 
American traveler. 

BURIED FAKIRS. 

If the dormouse can go into a torpid, lethargic and seem- 
ingly lifeless state for the winter, if the common housefly 
can hibernate for several months, why may not man ? Both 
noted Englishmen and Hindoos assured me that certain per- 
sons, first hypnotized and prepared, had been buried for 
months — dead to the world — and then resurrected to their 
health and their homes. These people are called Fakirs. 

Few have not heard of the Lahore fakir who, as recorded 
by Dr. W. L. McGregor (surgeon in the English army) in his 
history of the India Sikhs, was buried in a coffin-like box 
some two months, and then revived upon being exposed to 
the air. The history lies before me. The affair was verified 
by other physicians who speak of the " suspension of respira- 
tion, digestion and assimilation while in this trance." " It is 
well known," says Dr. McGregor, " that native Hindoos can 
train themselves to go without food for a long time, that 
they can refrain a while from breathing and can put them- 
selves into a death-like trance, in which, as in cases of 
asphyxia, both respiration and circulation cease for a time." 



412 AROUND THE WORLD. 

This fakir was bom in Kunkul, a place famous for fakir 
phenomena. He declared that his trance sleep was delight- 
ful. He was about forty years of age. One of the gentle- 
men who witnessed this burial feat is still living in Lahore. 
The place was well guarded, so as to admit of no imposition 
or fraud. " Outside of the whole," says Dr. McGregor, " there 
was placed a line of sentries, so that no one could approach 
the building. The strictest watch was kept for sixty days 
and sixty nights. At the expiration of the time the Mahara- 
jah, his grandson, several of his sidars, General Ventura, 
Captain Wade and myself proceeded to disinter the fakir. 
The box was unlocked, opened, the white sheet removed, 
the wax taken from his nose, mouth and ears, and warm 
water poured upon his head — when his pulse began to beat, 
and his lungs to expand. Soon he became conscious. This 
and similar cases are well authenticated by physicians, 
Maharajahs, English officers and others of the highest re- 
spectability." 

Asking for the philosophy of this, the reply was : the 
body is only a bit of machinery that the Atma, the inmost 
soul, manipulates and runs. And under proper conditions it 
can leave its tenement returning to it at will. 

THE YOGI THAT I LAST SAW. 

Hearsay incites to investigation, while seeing is knowing. 

Accompanied by Dr. English and Mr. Kneudson, of Adyar, 
with two intelligent Brahminical interpreters, the one the 
president of the Hindoo Triplicane Society, to which I had 
previously lectured, Ave rode down through Madras and on 
through Blacktown, out into a retired suburb to see a famous 
Yogi. He had been a traveling Swami Yogi for ten years ; 
but for twenty years he had sat in this mud-walled hut, back 
from the wayside, connected with which was neither chim- 
ney nor window. He keeps a fire or light of some kind con- 
stantly burning. Conducted by our Brahminical friends, and 
stooping, we entered the low doorway and squatted down, 




Yogi Meditation. 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 413 

there being in his hermitage neither chairs nor seats. The 
Yogi approached ns with a pan of ashes, sprinkling them 
upon our foreheads. The ashes were from the burning of 
dried cow chips. The Yogi's feet and lower limbs were 
naked. There was a string of indescribables around his 
neck and the turbaned hood partly concealed the matted 
hair and ashes upon his head. The close, smoky atmosphere 
was almost insufferable. The surroundings were dreary 
enough to delight a den of demons. 

This Yogi eats but one meal a day, and that is rice with a 
little milk. He looked lean, pinched and skinny. All of the 
fixings in his hermitage were smoky, sooty, dirty, repulsive. 
He talked glibly with the interpreter about the teachings of 
the Vedas, the Upanishads and other Hindoo literature, but 
gave no proof of telepathy, clairvoyance, levitation, psychic 
phenomena or of any approach towards the Supreme Soul. 

The Yoga state is called Samadhi, and in this state it is 
said that fire will not burn, water will not drown, nor will a 
deadly cobra bite Yogis. I should think not — if they are 
all as lazy and dirty as this one. 

Sitting in this old Yogi's hut, I felt like saying : " Push an 
opening up through this thatched roof and let in God's fresh 
air and sunlight ; go and wash yourself ; go and put on some 
nice clean garments ; eat at least two good meals a day ; stand 
up straight instead of squatting on the ground like a toad ; 
work six or eight hours each day at some useful manual labor, 
and the rest of the time, if you so choose, meditate, and repeat 
Om, the ' word of glory.' " 

The India of three thousand years ago is not the India of 
to-day. India with its magnificent Vedanta philosophy — 
almost the equivalent of the Spiritual philosophy in America, 
has been on the decline for a thousand years, or longer. 
During its fading glories it has been the great hatching 
maw of metaphysical monstrosities, such as this : " the age 
of. Brahma, or one hundred of his divine years must equal 
311,040,000,000,000 of our mortal years." Buddhism is con- 



414 AROUND THE WORLD. 

siclered by the philosophically inclined infinitely preferable to 
Hinduism. 

Colonel Olcott went to India a firm believer in the occult 
powers of the Yogis. He has been in India over seventeen 
years. In his search for Yogis, he found, so he said in one 
of his addresses, " only a crowd of painted imposters who 
masquerade as Sadlms, to cheat the charitable, and secretly 
give loose to their beastly natures." 

THE HINDOO SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. 

Americans are sensationalists, say the phlegmatic-inclined 
Germans. They are certainly fond of new toys if labeled 
foreign. It greatly amused the Theosophists and the cult- 
ured Brahmins of India, as well as interested myself to see 
how Unitarians, Universalists, Free-thinkers and some Spir- 
itualists got wild over this Swami, " the great Hindoo Brah- 
min," who, by the way, was not a Brahmin ; and, further, he 
cannot become a Brahmin except through death and re-birth 
into a Brahmin family. His real name is Norendra Nath 
Dutt. His father is a lawyer in Calcutta. And this Swami 
Vivekananda, otherwise the sensational Mr. Nath Dutt, was 
educated at the Church of Scotland Institution, and studied 
law for a time. He attended the Brahmo churches, acted 
upon the stage at the residence of B. K. C. Sen. Babu 
P. C. Mozoomdar in his life of Chunder Sen, says, " Mr. Dutt 
was introduced to me as the Paramhansa, great devotee of 
Dakshineshwar. He discoursed in a sort of half-delirious 
state, becoming now and then quite unconscious." This 
shows him to have been a Spiritualist medium. 

It was in 1889 that Mr. Dutt with several other Bengalese, 
agreed to become Sannyasis, wandering Hindoo monks. The 
old original Sannyasi were supposed to abandon all worldly 
concerns, and to depend upon alms for support. They were 
ascetics. Some smeared their heads with ashes. Others, until 
the British police interfered, went entirely naked ; . . . But 
Mr. Dutt, believing in progression, founded a sort of new 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 415 

order, one more gay and festive. His early asceticism failed 
to follow him to England and America. 

His Oriental garb of orange, crimson girdle, turbaned head, 
and gorgeous outfit generally, though unauthorized, if I am 
credibly informed by his order of monkhood, would with his 
fluent English naturally attract crowds in America. Ascetics 
of his school abjure beef, wine and all animal food. Their 
food is generally rice and one meal a day. What the 
Swami's diet was in America I do not know. The word 
Swami, by the way, means Lord. The " Calcutta Indian 
Mirror," writing of Mr. Dutt, alias Swami Vivekananda, 
says: "We have no objections to the publication of such 
American panegyrics on the Sannj^asi, but since he came to 
us to act on the stage of the Nava-Vinclavan theatre, or 
sang in one of the Bramo Somajes of this city, we know him 
so well, that no amount of newspaper writing could throw 
any new light on our estimate of his character." 

THE SWAMI AND THE YOGA PHILOSOPHY. 

There has just fallen into my hands away here in India, a 
new book by this Swami Vivekananda, entitled " Rajah 
Yoga ; or, lectures on the Yoga Philosophy." Heartily do I 
wish that my American countrymen could hear some of the 
learned pundit's criticisms of this book. Any honorable 
author in writing of a philosophy would include both 
theory and practice. What practical Yogaism is you will 
see presently. 

The Yoga philosophy is attributed to Patanjali, and Yoga 
originally meant " the suppression of the transformation of 
the thinking principle " ; but now it has come to mean union, 
teaching how the human soul may attain union with the 
Supreme Soul. This Hindoo Swami in treating of the 
"Yoga philosophy" — a massive bundle of metaphysical 
non-demonstrable propositions and archaic assertions — wittily 
skipped through it and over it, picking out the plums and 
quoting some of the aphorisms with comments. The work 



416 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

was shrewdly, cunningly, takingly done. This book looks 
well, reads well, and is chiefly valuable for its omissions of 
the Yoga practice, the ridiculous Yoga postures and the 
filthiness connected with it. 

YOGA POSTURES AND PRACTICE. 

The " Hartha Dipika," in describing the proper place for a 
Yoga location, says a cave, a dwelling, or small monastery in 
an out-of-the-way place, not larger than a cube of six feet, 
will do. The cell or mattrilla should have a small door, 
and no window ; it should be free from holes, cavities and 
inequalities. Of the eighty-four postures that Yogis must 
assume, the following are among the more important : 

In this Yoga cave or hut, the right foot should be placed 
on the left thigh and the left foot on the right thigh ; the 
hands should be crossed and the two great toes should be 
firmly held thereby ; the chin should be bent down on the 
chest, and in this posture the eyes should be directed to the 
tip of the nose. This is called Padmassana, the lotus pos- 
ture. 

Hold the great toes with the hands and draw them to the 
ears as in drawing a bow-string. Look at a point between 
the eyebrows and cut off the inspiration and expiration of 
the breath as far as possible. 

Other postures, according to Manibal and R. C. Bose, con- 
sist in the mixing of the prana with the apana, the lower 
breath ; inhaling at the left nostril, and letting the breath out 
at the right nostril. 

Some of these Yogis had long nails and matted hair ; some 
gazed at the sun, like the one I saw in Benares ; some went 
naked ; some gazed for days, months and years at the " navel- 
wheel of the body"; some inhaled smoke; some ate grass, 
leaves and cow's dejecta (see Col. Olcott's " Asceticism," p. 
3), and others still posed on one foot. But enough ! There is 
evidently no danger, notwithstanding the Swami's eloquence, 
of Spiritualists accepting the Yoga philosophy, or engaging 




Hindoo Penance. 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 417 

iii Yoga postures to come into union with the Supreme 
Soul. 

The noted author, J. Murdock, of Madras, in criticising the 
Swami's lectures upon the Yoga philosophy, quotes from him 
the following passage relating to God : 

" Starting from some fungus, some very minute, micro- 
scopic bubble, and all the time drawing from that infinite 
storehouse of energy, the form is changed slowly and slowly, 
until, in course of time it becomes a plant, then an animal, 
then man, ultimately God " (page 42). 

This may be Yoga philosophy, but it is not reason, science, 
or common-sense. 

SPIRITUALISM EN INDIA. 

Though there is no organization in India under the dis- 
tinctive name of Spiritualism, yet if Spiritualism means 
conscious communion with the so-called dead, then the Hin- 
doos have been Spiritualists for ages. Their old religious 
books abound in converse with Devas (Sanskrit), celestial 
beings — invisible beings also good and bad, and with Pitris 
(Sanskrit) departed ancestors. These latter they propitiate. 
A Hindoo pundit informed me only a few days since that all 
Hindoos believe that the invisible spaces are nearly filled with 
different gradations of spirits, one class, connected with our 
solar system, being estimated at 330,000,000,000. These 
spirits as well as the stars are believed to exercise mighty 
potencies in influencing human beings. 

Throughout the whole of the Sanskrit literature, from the 
Vedas to the Puranas, mention is made and that frequently 
of Bhutas, Pretas, Pitris, Devas, Pisachas — the invisible 
spirits of Hindoo ancestors. India's sacred books speak of 
their abodes, describe their distinctions and general charac- 
teristics — their power, their obsessing influences and how to 
avert their control by mantras, or invocations. 

Swami Vivekananda, made a hero of at some of the Spir- 
itualist camp-meetings in America, said to the Rev. Mr. 
Flagg, of New York, that — " Our Hindoo ancestors all be- 



418 AROUND THE WORLD. . 

lieved in spirit return and spirit converse ; and they continue 
to believe that they are our unseen helpers. . . . Spiritualism 
like the Yoga philosophy is very old in India." He attended 
Mrs. Williams's materializing seances in New York, and 
expressed great delight at the privilege ; under date of 
March 11, 1895, he wrote her : "I shall soon have a class on 
the Spiritualistic basis of the Hindoo religion, and I shall be 
highly pleased to have you one of my class." 

Brahmins generally oppose Spiritualism in the English 
and American sense of the word. They do not discrimi- 
nate between or differentiate Spiritualism from Spiritism 
with its concomitant obsessions. The stock in trade of 
Spiritism, the equivalent almost of Pitrisism, is phenomena ; 
while the basic foundation of Spiritualism is Spirit — pure, 
changeless, infinite Spirit. Spiritualism is the direct anti- 
thesis of materialism, and it incites to the study of man's 
intellectual, moral and spiritual nature — to the psychic 
forces that influence sensitives ; and it encourages the 
development of the spiritual in man, as well as demon- 
strates a future progressive existence. Spiritualism is the 
foe of bigotry, persecution, superstition and sectarian Chris- 
tianity. Certain Theosophists have been instrumental, I 
fear, in leading many thoughtful and cultured Hindoos 
astray, touching the merits and moral grandeur of Spirit- 
ualism. The aims of Theosophy and Spiritualism are one 
and the same — the uplifting of humanity. 

THE ADYAR MANSION. 

Aclyar is the head-centre of Theosophy. " Are you a 
Theosophist, doctor ? " Yes, if allowed to define Theosophy 
for myself. 

The real loyal Theosophical society, founded by Madame 
Blavatsky and Col. Olcott, is located at Adyar, five miles 
from Madras, on the river Adyar near its entrance into the 
ocean. The Adyar building is palatial in appearance and 
Oriental in style. A portion of this unique, palace-like 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 419 

structure is three stories high, the lower portion of the 
front part supported by pillars is all open, with a raised ros- 
trum for lectures, receptions and a general reading-room. 

Sitting and reading or musing, I frequently saw little 
squirrels, toads and lizards hopping or playfully running 
across the marble floor. No one disturbed them, so they 
had become both trusting and friendly. There are twenty- 
five acres connected with this Theosoj)hical Mecca, planted 
and decorated with bread-fruit, mango and other trees of 
richest foliage. The house, half-buried in climbing, ever- 
blooming vines, facing the river, has doors wide and ponder- 
ous. The windows are exceedingly large and uncanny. 
The rooms are capacious with high ceilings. The floorings 
are stone or marble upon which rest heavy pillars, and the 
walls are hung with the shields of the different Theosophi- 
cal branches in all lands. The library is absolutely massive, 
containing many very valuable, unpublished manuscripts. 
The shrine is located directly in rear of the lower library, 
and in which are paintings of some of the Mahatmas, the 
existence of which is not yet fully settled. 

Adyar is not only restful, inviting to study and medita- 
tation ; but, the centre of Theosophical culture, research and 
authority for the enlightened Theosophic world. Happy 
were the days and weeks that I spent in this palace of 
books, companioned with Col. Olcott, the only living 
founder of modern Theosophy ! 

CAN EUROPEANS AND AMEEICANS LIVE IN INDIA? 

Emphatically, Yes ! if they behave themselves and even 
decently obey nature's divine laws. 

India is not antagonistic, either from a physical or moral 
point of view to the European races. True, if men go there 
and drink liquors, walk the streets at late hours, and dive 
into dens of dissipation as too many of them do, their health 
fails. ' Only a miracle could make it otherwise. 

If young soldiers going from England to India become 



420 AROUND THE WORLD. 

the victims of disease — a loathsome disease, the fault is 
their own, and should not be accounted to the hot climate, 
but rather to the heated passions of animal-flesh-eating civili- 
zation. People have been theologically taught so long to 
lay their personal sins to climate, to poor old Adam in the 
garden, or to some other cowardly palliating device, and 
then, that the consequences of their sins can be blotted out 
by belief in the blood and merits of the Lord Jesus, that 
their addled brains whirl and swing, doubtingly, between 
Eden and Calvary. Christians, and especially missionaries, 
rising above creeds and Calvinistic confessions, should teach 
Oriental nations — if anything — that the universe is gov- 
erned by immutable laws, cause and effect ; and if they vio- 
late nature's laws, they must suffer the consequences, regard- 
less of any Adam, Krishna, or Jesus. 

English women and American missionary women also, who, 
when in their native countries walked a good deal, and on 
their feet superintended and took a part in their household 
work, when reaching India, drop down too often into a 
pitiable indolence. They employ a small army of servants. 
They take no exercise except to go down a stairway for their 
meals and step into a barouche for an evening's drive. They 
do their shopping from the carriage, or sitting in a chair — 
in brief, they are literally lazy ! And laziness tends to ill- 
ness, for which India's climate is held responsible. 

It is said also by a class of pessimists, that the children 
of Europeans deteriorating in India, must be returned to 
their native countries, early, or early as possible for recupera- 
tion. This is not only misleading, but physiologically unjust, 
untrue. If English, Indian-born children were relieved of an 
abnormal hot-bed existence — if they were properly bathed, 
dieted, lightly clothed and' properly educated in the laws of 
hygiene, their shoulders would broaden and their cheeks red- 
den with the crimson blush of health. 

English soldiers transferred to India, gratifying their lower 
propensities, feasting upon the corpses of cows, sheep and 



THE IXDIA OF TO-DAY. 421 

hogs boiled or broiled, and, washing down the half-cooked, 
half-masticated flesh of the above-named dead animals with 
strong coffee or brandy and soda, sow to the whirlwind of 
disease and death. They reap what they sow. This is 
Karma. It is not the hot, debilitating climate of India, but 
their depraved conduct that so early kills them. 

WHAT THE HINDOOS SAY OF THEIR CLIMATE. 

A prominent India journal says : — 

" If the natives of our country led such lives as do the English and even 
many of the missionaries, they, too, would deteriorate. It is accepted as an 
axiom that Europeans born in the country and reared here, as well as 
Eurasians, are steadily deteriorating from the stamina and vigor of the 
original stock. A greater error could not be fulminated. The finest 
specimens of manhood physically, are represented by Europeans who have 
been in the country for three generations. Among the Eurasians, splendid 
specimens of physical manhood can be shown. Of course, city-bred men 
are always inferior to those who are country bred, and so it is in India. ... 
If it was generally known that Europeans can live as safely and as healthily 
in India as in any part of Europe, that is, if they live sensibly and hygieni- 
cally, many Europeans would settle in India and invest capital, for India is 
a grand country. The resources of India awaiting development are im- 
mensely great. European enterprise, European capital, would make India 
a magnificent country. Crude materials are lying throughout the length 
and breadth of the land, awaiting capital and intelligent enterprise, to turn 
them into manufactures yielding handsome returns. It is necessary for 
India's welfare that the truth regarding the Indian climate should be gen- 
erally known." 

IS THERE MUCH LEPROSY IX IXDIA? 

Not very much. It is not as prevalent as it is in China, 
Singapore, or the Sandwich Islands. In Ceylon, I employed 
a leprous Kandian youth to write for me, that because of his 
leprosy had been dismissed from Government Service. I had 
no fear of the disease. If contagious at all, it is only feebly 
so. It was after nine years of continuous contact with lepers 
that Father Damien of Honolulu memory died. Very few 
women are lepers. It is the general opinion of physicians 
that syphilitic persons, upon exposure for a certain period, 



422 ARGTJKD THE WORLD. 

are more apt to have the disease than the otherwise 
healthy. The period of incubation of the disease is placed 
from three to twenty years. Often a husband may have it 
for nearly a lifetime and none others of the family. Hered- 
ity is a certainty, however, and yet it sometimes skips one 
and two generations. A young and very intelligent Hindoo 
of Madras, upon whose person the sluggish swellings had just 
appeared and who consulted me, said that his grandfathers on 
both sides had succumbed to the disease, but there was not a 
vestige of its appearance in either of his parents. The eti- 
ology of this disease is at best but poorly understood ; still, 
it is certain that a syphilitic soil contains just the qualities 
that if the leprous bacillus be introduced, it will develop 
this terrible disease. 

Many Oriental lands are yet but partially explored and 
geographically mapped. On my second tour around the 
world; I spent some time in poor half-unknown Cambodia. 
Here, one of the hospital physicians at the Capital in- 
formed me that there " were many lepers in the country ; 
but the people neither avoid, nor refuse to eat with them, 
nor even to sleep with them." Dr. Coltman writes that the 
reason of this was that because the " ruler of the country in 
one instance was a leper, and the people ceased, on this 
account, to feel dislike to it." Leprosy is not painful. Often 
the first symptom is a numbness of the part attacked. In 
Northern China there is no segregation of the leper class. 
They are seen mixing about among the healthy, buying, sell- 
ing and in no way deprived of their freedom. 

It is a mistake to say that leprosy is an incurable disease. 
But neither calomel, iron, quinine, strychnia, cod-liver oil, 
nor the mineral acids will cure it. The remedy lies in the 
use of grains, vegetables and fruits for foods, pure, distilled 
water, pure air, medicated steam baths, and massage with 
the touch of the magnetic hand. Medically speaking, one of 
the best constitutional alterative tonics is the syrup of the 
iodide of iron in small doses. Dr. Cantlie uses the ointment 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 423 

of Unna, composed of ckrysarobin five per cent., salicylic 
acid two per cent., and ichthyol five per cent. When used 
on the face it should be much reduced. 

Dr. Coltman says : " I have used an ointment of carbonate 
of zinc for the ulcerative process. I have also used with 
good success hydrarg. ammoniat, zinc oxid and plumbi acet. 
made into an ointment with cosmoline." But, besides keep- 
ing the excretory organs active, diet, steaming, rubbing — 
massage is indispensable. Let no leper despair of a cure. 

India's progress under British rude. 

Child marriage constitutes one of the dark spots to-day on 
the fair face of India. I will not describe it. It will not well 
bear description, from either a physiological or social stand- 
point. It is quite possible that Mrs. Dr. Ryder has greatly 
magnified its mischief. Brahmins and intelligent Hindoos 
unitedly so affirm. But, be this as it may, it is certain that 
she does not care to have her book circulated in India — the 
very place where it should be circulated, if just and criti- 
cally authentic in statement. 

Suttee, the self-immolation of the widow by burning alive 
upon the same funeral pyre of the dead husband, was popu- 
lar and considered justifiable in India for hundreds of years. 
Priests justified and encouraged it as they did hundreds of other 
superstitions. The sources of priestly revenues in nearly all 
lands are superstitions and donations. Priests are the temple 
beggars. 

Brahminical writers of the agone centuries asserted that 
widow-burning was authorized by their sacred books ; but 
deeper researches by more competent Sanskrit scholars, dis- 
covered no authority either in the Vedas or Manu for the 
murderous practice. Akbar, so far as his rule extended, par- 
tially prohibited it in the sixteenth century. 

The burning of widows was very prevalent in India long 
after "the East India Company came into power. This Com- 
pany tried to prohibit it, by forbidding it unless voluntary 



424 AROUND THE WORLD. 

on the part of the widow. This did not materially diminish 
the number burned, " for in the twelve years between 1815 
and 1826, there were 7,154 officially reported in Bengal 
alone." 

In the year 1829, Gov. Bentinck enacted a law, declaring 
all aid, assistance or participation in any act of suttee, to be 
murder and punishable with death. The Brahmin priests 
denounced this law with great vengeance as interfering 
with their religion. Priests, always conservative, lag behind 
prophets and people. Rammohun Roy, be it said to his 
credit, discouraged and preached against the suttee practice. 
He was an inspired Hindoo, as was Chunder Sen. 

Superstitions necessarily decline before the march of 
science and culture. The sacredness of the Ganges as a 
river for penances, immersions, swearing by, and for the 
depositing of those of the dead not burned, is going out of 
date with many other old-time superstitions. 

Once I counted, in years agone, four dead, decaying 
human bodies floating on the placid Ganges, while taking 
a boat-ride before sunrise, down along the river by Benares, 
cit}>- of sacred shrines and temples, in several of which 
were kept and religiously cuddled — if not worshipped — 
elephants, bulls and monkeys. The Palestinian Nazarene 
said, " God is Spirit, and they that worship Him, should 
worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." 

Caste, if anything of the kind is admissible, should be 
based upon intelligence and moral worth and not upon 
blood as in Britain, nor upon sordid wealth as in America. 
Social caste initiated and instituted in the East by a schem- 
ing priesthood, is at best a scourge, a pretension, a vile 
moral pest. It cannot long stand before railways and the 
sturdy tread of science. Already it is softening, broaden- 
ing, among the more enlightened of the Indians. Brother- 
hood as taught in the Vedas — as taught by the Hebrew 
prophets and later by Spiritualists and Theosophists — is 
becoming an inspiring watchword in India's progress. One 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 425 

of Lord Buddha's first teachings was — " down with caste ! 
as death levels all, so a true and holy life must equalize all." 
Unwisely flattering the caste Hindoos, Mrs. Besant (a recent 
outgrowth from materialism) half apologized for the Indian 
caste system in her published lectures. It was neither west- 
ern nor womanly. Our real friends do not flatter us. It is 
the lame that require crutches, and the egregiously bad that 
need apologizing for and bolstering up with honeyed words. 
Another travailing birth of Mrs. Besant up out of archaic 
legends, Upanishad mysticisms, impossible miracles and 
incarnated monstrosities christened gods, into the golden 
sunshine of Spiritualism — that divine Spiritualism whose 
corner-stone is Spirit — pure, boundless, changeless — O 
infinite Spirit, and she will find rest for her weary, wander- 
ing feet — rest within the templed gates of the true " wisdom 
religion," Spiritualism, that Spiritualism which implies spirit 
meditations, spirit communications (not with invented 
" shells "), but with our loved in the higher spheres of intelli- 
gence, and the leading of a calm, serene, spiritual life. 

SLAVERY IN INDIA. 

Not only previous to English rule had the plague, famines 
and devastating wars prevailed among the Maharajah, rajahs 
and tribal kings and chiefs, but slavery, recognized alike by 
Hindu and Mahomedan law, was perpetrated "in India by 
the four unfailing sources of birth, war, debt, and famine." 

" On the British acquisition of the country, slavery of a firm type existed 
every where, chiefly in the form of domestic servitude and agricultural bond- 
age. The early English manuscript records refer to it without any hint 
of blame and simply as an existing fact. What is to be done with a boat- 
load of slaves which had got into the hands of the police ? what is to be 
done about recruits who have enlisted in one of our battalions, but are 
reclaimed by the local landholder as his slaves ? what is to be done with a 
deceased nobleman's retainers, 'the majority of whom are slaves?' 
Those were the commonplace questions to which slavery as an accepted 
institution gave rise in the last century. As late as 1841 the Commission- 
ers are said to have found in a single tract over two hundred landholders 



426 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

each in possession of two thousand slaves. Their report shows that the 
number of slaves varied in different districts from one-sixth to one-half of 
the entire population. Sir Bartle Frere estimated, if we remember rightly, 
that there were nine million slaves in India in 1843. 

" The Maratha misrule in Orissa, for example, led to horrors scarcely less 
terrible than those of the ' middle passage.' The Ganjam records dis- 
close miserable gangs of peasantry who had been shipped from Orissa for 
sale in Southern India. The frail crafts that carried them were often 
driven ashore on the Madras coast. Wretched, footsore parties, rescued 
by the compassion of our officers, were passed northwards from one British 
factory to another, till they reached the Orissa frontier, leaving a trail of 
their sick and dying along the route. A proclamation by the Madras Gov- 
ernment against this abuse of the system proved in the last century inef- 
fectual. The whole system is so completely forgotten that the local annal- 
ist remarks, ' But for the original papers which I here cite in support of 
my statements, its existence at any time would now be denied.' 

" Two chief sources of the slave population were the enslavement of 
families for debt and the sale of women and children during famine. It 
must be remembered that local scarcities, often deepening into famine, 
were almost of yearly occurrence in India before British roads broke down 
the isolation of districts. Such scarcities acted as a constant cause of the 
sale of women and children. In 1769-70 a native officer indicated the 
severity of the Bengal famine by the fact that buyers of children could no 
longer be found. In 1790 the peasants in the Maratha district of Cuttack 
gave themselves and their families away for food. During the famine of 
1813 half the free population in the district of Agra was reported to have 
disappeared, a boy being sold for a single meal. In the scarcity following 
the floods of 1834 children were hawked about the streets of Calcutta. 
Male adults, women, boys and girls had their regular market rates — girls 
fetching four to ten times the price of boys, according to their good looks. 
The sale of his family formed a normal resource of the peasant during 
famine. 

" So deeply rooted was slavery in the customs of rural India that the 
first British attempts at interference proved vain. After earlier measures 
against the importation of slaves by sea, a local order in 1820 forbade the 
actual sale of slaves in the districts which we had conquered from the 
Peshwa; a legislative enactment in 1827 required that such sales, to be 
valid, must be duly registered before a magistrate. The status of slavery 
was clearly recognized and Lord William Bentinck's effort in 1834 to liber- 
ate the slaves who passed to the British Government among the other chat- 
tels of the Raja of Coorg obtained but partial success. Of 1,115 slaves 
thus set free, only thirty families took to cultivation on their own account 
and 250 accepted service under peasant proprietors. Hereditary thraldom 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 427 

bad worked so deeply into the minds of the rest that they re-entered of 
their free will the class of bondsmen and ' were treated exactly as if they 
had remained slaves, many of them destroying their certificates of free- 
dom.' 

" The Indian law of 1843 is sometimes spoken of as an Abolition Act and 
it is inferred that slavery could have had little vitality in India because the 
Act aroused no overt resistance. As a matter of fact, when the law was 
first proposed, even after the Parliamentary report and with the powerful 
advocacy of Mr. Bird's minute, it met with such opposition that it was laid 
aside. It was only the accident of the whole power of the Government 
passing into Mr. Bird's hands, while Lord Ellenborough was playing the 
stage-conqueror in Northern India, that enabled the Act to be passed. 
Nor did the Act venture to abolish in express terms the status of slavery in 
India. It refused the aid of the Civil Courts to enforce the sales of slaves 
or to enforce rights of property in them, or to dispossess holders of prop- 
erty on the plea of its having been derived from a slave. The Act also 
made offences against slaves punishable by the criminal law as if committed 
against free persons. The great wars from which the Company had just 
emerged and the new wars on which it was about to enter, left little leisure 
for internal politics. But economic causes were at work against the old- 
world slavery of India, and the people were slowly prepared for its total 
prohibition by the Penal Code of 1860. Forty years elapsed between the 
local executive order against slave sales in 1820 and the time at which the 
British-Indian Government ventured to make slave dealing in India a 
criminal offence." 

The above from the "Weekly Times," Feb. 19, 1897, with 
previous liberal and confirmatory quotations from Hindoo 
journals, very clearly proves that India was by no means a 
paradise previous to British rule. That she has alwa} r s ruled 
wisely and beneficently, I neither affirm nor believe. My con- 
victions are to the contrary. Too well do I know of the 
brusque, overbearing and almost brutal characteristics of cer- 
tain English officials in the East. 

Seemingly strangers to the fact that themselves and the 
Hindoos are of one original stock, the Aryans, they seem 
blind to the nobler instincts of fraternity, and half-dead to 
that sweet spirit of gentleness and tenderness that becomes 
such a professedly high degree of civilization. Queen Vic- 
toria is as deservedly as decidedly popular in India. Her 



428 . AROUND THE WORLD. 

officials are not. It is the feeling with multitudes of the 
natives that English rule partakes largely of despotism and 
tyranny over the masses that have little or no means of re- 
dress — no Parliamentary voice. Deprived, they say, of the 
" ballot — of home rule — of fire-arms and other inalienable 
rights, we are taxed down to the verge of starvation." 

The English having abolished the suttee practice and slav- 
ery, they should now grapple with and ultimately abolish the 
child-marriage system. Very many Hindoos are already op- 
posed to it, realizing that true marriage — the life-long union 
of two loving souls can be arranged and should be consum- 
mated only by the intelligent and the reflecting involved in 
the union. Love is the soil, subsoil and cement of mar- 
riage. And Hindoo parents might just as well eat or drink 
for their children as to love for them, and marriage without 
love is only another name for lust, and lust leads to social 
death. It has been said by certain fanatics that puberty 
prompts to speedy marriage and " nature must not be med- 
dled with." Then do not cut the nails, trim the hair, clothe 
the body, fell the forests, nor pull the weeds from your gar- 
den. Down on all such rubbish and moral rottenness ! 
Woman is not physiologically mature till twenty-two or four 
years of age, and man some two years later. Maturity, health 
and wisdom are the indicators of marriage. Infantile betroth- 
als and child-marriages are abominations to be abrogated. 

BRITAIN AND INDIA FACE TO FACE. 

Never before in the annals of time have two great civili- 
zations, differing so widely, been brought face to face. The 
struggle for supremacy commenced years ago. It continues. 
It is the struggle of the mad north-lands against the milder- 
mannered and warmer south-lands — the struggle of physical 
force and push, against a quiet and more restful intelligence 
— stern materialism against a mystic Spiritualism — physics 
against metaphysics, and science, an ever-changing science 
against myth and religious tradition. 



THE INDIA OF TO-DAY. 429 

A scholarly Brahmin recently wrote as follows in the 
" Madras Mail " : 

" That Hindoo life is now being deeply affected by contact with the 
Western civilization and the ideas which Western education aided by the 
railway, the telegraph and the telephone brings, goes without saying, and 
it can hardly be doubted that though it may not be entirely replaced by 
European civilization, it will in the end be considerably modified by it. 
There are many among us who deplore the fact that the good old institu- 
tions should now, under the influence of these new ideas, be in danger of 
destruction or alteration. In the case of some this feeling is to be explained 
by the tendency which is found to exist at all times and in all countries, to 
admire the past and to regard all change as deterioration. But there are 
others who think that the civilization of the West has not on the whole con- 
tributed to the happiness of a nation, that while it has certainly led to the 
production of immense wealth, it has also brought about a selfish, sordid 
spirit and much misery, and that under it, the difference between him who 
hath and him who hath not is getting more and more accentuated. It is 
urged that in the unrestricted competition which forms a very essential 
feature of this civilization, the rich man is getting richer and the poor man 
poorer, and that in the struggle between capital and labor the latter neces- 
sarily gets worsted, with the result that side by side with the accumulation 
of large wealth in the hands of a few, you have a very large portion of the 
community in an abject state of poverty and utterly at the mercy of the 
moneyed classes." 

Speaking in general terms, India, one of the grandest coun- 
tries on earth, rich in soils, rivers and forests, summering under 
an eternal sun, peopled with intelligent Aryan millions, among 
whom are men of the deepest research, profoundest thought, 
exalted attainments and aspirational desires for political free- 
dom, the development of their fatherland, the physical, mental 
and moral welfare of their countrymen — and yet is stricken 
with famine, with the plague, burdened with a merciless taxa- 
tion and staggering under an ever-accumulating, unbearable 
load of poverty. God and good angels lift the cloud and has- 
ten the day of India's redemption. 

Hindoo life is pre-eminently village life. Though toiling off 
on farming-lands during the day they flock into the villages 
at night-time. This great country is not dotted with farm- 



430 APvOUKD THE WORLD. 

houses and school-houses as in America. And yet the Hindoo, 
whether of the higher or lower caste, is exceedingly anxious 
for an education. Brahmins are naturally great students. 
There are schools in some localities for even the pariahs. 
Col. Olcott established one of this character near Adyar. 
Tennyson and Carlyle, Emerson, Darwin and Wallace are 
well-known among the higher classes of India. American 
literature, too, is rapidly finding its way into the more distant 
villages away out from the crowded cities. Many of these 
people prefer Longfellow ; prefer, I cannot tell why, Ameri- 
can to English works of history, poetry and medicine. Last 
month I received five letters from Madras, Tinnevelly, Lahore 
and Madura, asking for American journals and books treating 
of science, history and Spiritualism. 

Just as I was leaving Madras last May, a Hindoo journal- 
ist handed me quite a pamphlet entitled " Chromopathy," a 
sort of a compilation from the works of my erudite fellow- 
countryman, Dr. E. D. Babbitt, author of " Principles of 
Light and Color," " Human Culture and Cure," " Religion 
as Revealed in the Material and Spiritual Universe," etc., 
all or which are scholarly, up-to-date works, with visions of 
the beyond — works of deepest research and broadest range 
of thought as touching originality, science and philosophy — 
life, health and immortality. 

These books and others treating of sunlight, massage, elec- 
tricity and the finer forces generally, together with the instru- 
ments used by the doctor in treating and curing diseases, 
may be obtained by writing Dr. E. D. Babbitt, 253 South 
Broadway, Los Angeles, Cal. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

HINDOO DOCTRINES OF THE DEAD. 

"Tell me, I cried, prophet, 

Thou shade of the mighty past — 
What of the truth in the future"? 
Is its horoscope yet cast?" 

In the gray of antiquity, Solon, a Grecian sage, buckled 
on his sandals and traveled afar into Egypt in search of 
truth — and while he traveled he also taught. There are 
no higher aims in life than teaching and being taught. 

Learned Brahmins of to-day often travel the length and 
breadth of India, teaching as they go. These are not fakirs, 
but Sanskrit-versed sages. If the} r — if any Brahmin goes 
into a foreign country to settle, or as a traveler eating the 
foods of foreigners he forfeits his caste. Hindooism in some 
of its phases was rejrtresented at the " World's Parliament of 
Eeligions," but Orthodox Brahminism was not. No true 
Brahmin presumes to leave India, nor will he till caste dies 
out into the better, broader faith of brotherhood. 

The Arjnna of Lahore, writes as follows of a traveling 
sage : — 

During the last week Lahore had the good fortune of seeing a man who 
might rightly be considered a model of the ancient Hindu and a worthy 
inspirer of the rising generation of the modern Hindus. Mr. D. Subba 
Rao belongs to a very respectable family of Maharatta Brahmans now 
residing at Madura, Southern India. Being an elderly gentleman, he has 
given up his home and family, wife and children,, and is traveling all over 
India visiting the national sacred shrines and coming into personal contact 



432 AROUND THE WORLD. 

with the intellectual lights of the Native India of to-day. Like many of 
his countrymen (the Madrasis), he has an extraordinary command over the 
English language ; in fact he uses it so simply, correctly, eloquently and 
without a show of effort, that one cannot but admire. His simple mode of 
living, his noble features, his high thinking, his wealth of experience, his 
intellectual strength to deal with and speak extempore on almost all the 
subjects of human concern, do not demand but command respect from any 
educated person who has some interest in the intellectual advancement of 
his countrymen. And over and above all this he is a master of some of 
the occult sciences of divination, Phrenology, Physiognomy, Psychology, 
Palmistry, moles, etc., and not at least, Mantra Shastra. He holds a con- 
siderable lot of autograph letters, photographs, medals, rewards, and other 
tokens of regard from the highest men of India, intellectually and politi- 
cally. . . . His secular qualities not less than his occult acquirements, have 
given him a very remarkable and unique position in the life of the modern 
India, as he is in possession of the most private secrets of, as well as the 
public information about the leading natives of India and not only of their 
present and past state but even of their future ! He is a great scholar and 
he is very fond of examining every character in the light of his divine art. 
Those who have had the occasion of examining him in it must have been 
agreeably startled at his proficiency in spiritual gifts ; he told us of a mole 
which was on a private part of the body of the present writer, a knowledge 
of which must have been impossible to an ordinary mortal ! We wish him 
every success in his patriotic ambitions. 

Such a man traveling in America would be considered a 
Spiritual medium, although it would not be thought a very- 
high phase of mediumship to be pointing out " moles " on 
the body. 

Continental, English, and American Spiritualism and 

Spiritualists were shamefully misrepresented in India a 

number of years ago by Madame Blavatsky and some of her 

biologized subordinates. The future will rectify all this ; 

for 

" Ever the truth comes uppermost, 
And ever is justice done." 

R. B. J. Sukharam, Gadgil, L. L. B., a Hindoo of some 
attainments, informs us that the " Pishachas spoken of in 
their sacred books refer to gross, depraved human souls, 
which, after the death of their bodies, are earth-chained as a 



HINDOO DOCTRINES OF THE DEAD. 433 

result of their utter lack of Spirituality and purity. It is 
these disembodied human beings that do the communicating 
with the living." He further informs us that, according to 
the Hindoo belief, " very selfish men, men of mere intel- 
lectual endowments, who lack Spiritual intuitions, may 
become pishachas equally with the vicious — pishachas 
being the returning souls of demon men." He continues: 
" In this invisible state, the soul, being deprived of the means 
of enjoyment through its own physical body, is perpetually 
tormented by hunger, appetite and other bodily desires, and 
can have only vicarious joys by approaching within the aura, 
or by entering into the living physical bodies of others, or 
by absorbing the subtilest essences of the depraved and the 
oblations offered for their own sake." 

Not all pishachas can enter the " living human bodies of 
others ; and none can enter the body of a holy man — an 
ascetic." "Hindoo funeral ceremonies, from the first to the 
eleventh and twelfth days after a person's death, are little 
more than methods to prevent the hungry earth-bound soul 
from becoming a pishacha. If the pishacha, or deceased 
friend, begins to manifest itself, there are special ceremonies, 
called pishacha-machini, intended to emancipate this soul 
from the state of desire." 

Indians, as do Christian sectarists, regard all influences 
from the spirit-world as abnormal and dangerous. Religious 
ecclesiastics always connect such manifestations with the 
devil, or with the demons of the under-world ; while Hindoos 
generally consider the return of spirits, especially if occurring 
in their own families, as a great misfortune ; and yet, singular 
as it may seem, they make scarcely an effort to study hyp- 
notism, psychic vibration, will-force or the trance, but, cry- 
ing pitris, pishachas, obsession, they rush wildly off to the 
priests in some of their temples to have the spirit-intruder 
expelled. And, probably from experience, these priestly 
adepts are vastly more expert in exorcisms than the Christian 
missionaries. 



434 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Often did I witness, while traversing India, their rude 
methods of dispossessing the obsessed. Not only did I see 
camphor and various gums burned, but women beaten to 
"drive the devil out." In obsessional cases, decision of 
character, a positive will and a high soul purpose are inva- 
riably more successful than uncouth figures and the mutter- 
ing of priestly mantras. And this — -all this is an admission 
of the fact, the stubborn fact of Spiritualism. But is it not 
dangerous ? Yes, much as the fire is that may burn homes 
and cities — much as water is that may flood the streets and 
the fields. What then ? Shall the fires that cook our food 
be forever quenched? and shall rains no more fall upon our 
grasses and groves? Shall love,' because not differentiated 
from lust, and so abused, be crushed out of humanity's great 
sympathetic soul ? How disgracefully pitiable this chop-logic 
of the semi-idiot and the bigot ! 

The great Swedish seer, Swedenborg, truthfully taught that 
the heavens and the hells, the upper and lower kingdoms of 
conscious intelligences, are all open to the different races of 
earth. And, whether admitting or not, we are all, through 
the finer forces and the laws of vibration, influenced by the 
unseen auras, by the thoughts and the spirit intelligences of 
those that dwell in the invisible spheres about us. 

Phenomenal Spiritualism, old as antiquity, is a fact ; and 
all history and all sacred books confirm the fact. It is the 
antithesis of a hopeless, dreamless materialism. It is God's 
living witness of a future conscious existence. Religious 
Spiritualism is a fact plus truth — Divine truth — that touches, 
and transfigures the soul into the divine image. And this 
Spiritualism, already cosmopolitan, is on earth to stay in some 
form and under some name ; and all the combined potencies 
of superstition and bigotry, of hells and devils cannot drive 
the blessed truth of angel ministries out of human hearts 
and souls. It is as firmly rooted there as is the intuitive 
conviction of immortality itself. 

Leaving Ceylon again, April 23, for India, crossing the 




Old Hindoo Temple. 



HINDOO DOCTRINES OF THE DEAD. 435 

narrow strip of waters, ever rough in the monsoon seasons, 
with no decent harbor for landing, I reached Tuticorrin the 
next day, seeing a gathered conglomeration of Indians in 
their primitive type of naturalness. The railway station was 
crowded with these poor pariahs from drought-smitten dis- 
tricts, excitedly chatting and clinging to their bundles, wait- 
ing to ship for Colombo, then pursuing their way back to the 
great Ceylonese tea-plantations. 

It was nearly night when we reached Madura, a city of 
eighty thousand, and originally a great religious capital, old 
as ancient Jerusalem, or Rome in her palmiest period. Here 
resided that once powerful monarch Tirumai Nayak. And 
here may be seen a magnificent temple, covering an area of 
over fourteen acres, unique as ancient — that the vandal 
Mohammedans failed to destroy. Making little mention of its 
images, its lighted altars, its sacred elephants, its gold-leaf 
covered gods, with its hall of a thousand pillars — the whole 
structure is weird, grand, gorgeous and peculiarly Oriental. 
Some of the architecture is absolutely exquisite. Once 
Madura was the center of great learning and political influ- 
ence. "It was," says a noted English writer, "the seat of a 
university long before Cambridge or Oxford had come into 
existence, a university which united in itself the functions of 
an academy and a royal society of letters, which dispensed 
fame to poets and conferred immortality on works of genius." 

Strange as it may seem, Brahma has no temples in India, 
and receives no worship. Gods have their day and die away 
into oblivion. Madura is a great center of Saivaite worship, 
each worshipper bearing upon his forehead three horizontal 
paint-lines ; while the Vishnuites have one straight line of 
paste or paint drawn down the forehead to the nose. Others 
have different marks to symbolize the sect to which they 
belong ; the Brahmin wearing his three-plied string over his 
shoulder. Exceedingly pleasant are my memories of several 
cultured Brahmins in this city, and also of a distinguished 
Parsee physician — all Theosophists. Fortunate is the trav- 



436 AROUND THE WORLD. 

-eler that meets such friends and courteous guides along life's 
checkered pilgrimage. . . . 

On Monday evening, May 4, 1 lectured before the Hindoo 
Triplicane Literary Society of Madras. It was decidedly a 
learned audience, the majority being graduates of the Madras 
Presidency College. This institution has nearly two thousand 
students. It faces the ocean. Passing it one day in a car- 
riage I observed many of the students out under the tamarind 
and orange trees engaged in their studies. Such energy can 
scarcely fail of being crowned with success. Leaving the 
carriage I went over to the Vishnu Temple, musical in one 
■department with chantings in the Tamil and responses by 
the priests. On the outside of the temple I saw the elephant 
belonging to it, and the great uncouth several-storied car, 
decorated with gods and religious devices, and drawn around 
the square enclosing the tank on festival days. It requires 
probably a thousand people to draw this car. Music precedes 
the march and flowers are sometimes thrown under the wheels 
— but enthusiastic worshippers do not thrust themselves under 
these ponderous wheels to be crushed, as missionaries have 
falsely reported in Christian lands. 

Madame Blavatsky in her will requested that the annivers- 
ary of her death be kept by readings from the Bhagavad Gita 
and from Arnold's " Light of Asia," with appropriate addresses. 
It is called the White Lotus Anniversary, and was punctually 
kept in Adyar. The platform was tastefully ornamented 
with palms and tropical foliage. An empty chair was placed 
upon the platform decorated with white lotus blossoms. The 
pillars in the rear of this palatial building were trimmed with 
tropical foliage shaded by waving palms. Pundits read from 
the Bhavagad Gita in Sanskrit. Colonel Olcott, myself, and 
several Brahmin Theosophists delivered short addresses. 
Whatever be said of Madame Blavatsky's eccentricities and 
wilderness of writings not always carefully thought out, nor 
logically presented, nor positions proven, she was neverthe- 
less a wonderful woman — a marvellous, inspirational and 



HINDOO DOCTRINES OF THE DEAD. 437 

materializing medium ! What a pity that one so active and 
talented should now be imprisoned (Mrs. Besant being author- 
ity) in the physical body of a dark-skinned Hindoo boy. Can- 
didly I think her the freed and deserving subject of a higher 
and far nobler destiny. 

THE PLAGUE. 

Under some name the plague during past centuries has 
swept millions into eternity. Especially may this be said of 
India and China. Other countries have been similarly smitten. 
It is not difficult for the educated physician to divine the 
causes of this disease, which should have been called the 
glandular plague, rather than "bubonic." 

Briefly summed up, the causes were dirt, dampness and 
germ fungi. This plague-epidemic, as was generally conceded 
by the Bombay press, attacked the rats first. These live and 
thrive best in low, dark, underground places. Multitudes 
not only died with this disease, but they soon carried the in- 
fectious germs along their dark, hidden runways to old tiled 
or palm-thatched shanties, but in time to the better residences. 
The rats died first because nearer the damp, filthy soil-surface. 
It is positively certain that filth and dampness were the chief 
determining factors in each local outbreak. Cleanliness, pure 
air, hygenic foods, in a word, sanitation methods will readily 
destroy the mad depredations of the plague. 

Personally I have a deep interest in everything that tends 
to the physical, mental and spiritual upbuilding of India's 
thronging millions. Naturally, as the needle to the pole, do 
my fraternal affections flow out to the Aryan Indians far over 
the seas. Keeping you in remembrance, oh, Brahmins, I ever 
clasp you to my heart ! 

Standing upon the mount of vision I see still farther — see 
that there are ties between us which we share in common with 
all the world. To say, with Terence, " Human! nihil a me 
alienum puto," is to repeat a truth, confirmed by the ripest 
experience, and to which modern science attaches the pro- 
foundest significance. The superstitions and politics, the 



438 AROUND THE WORLD. 

aspirations and the glories of the Brahminized races are not 
without their analogies in our midst to-day. May the inter- 
national blending of the Occident and the Orient prove a joy 
and a blessing to each and all. 

Pilgrim as I am — afloat on the ocean of being as we all are, 
circumstances affect us, and unseen powers a great cloud o 
witnesses, influence us. We did not choose our birth-land, nor 
time of coming into this objective existence ; nor the govern- 
ment under which we would be born. Fate and forces be- 
yond our control placed us here. And all is well! Regard- 
less of color, clime or nationality, humanity has a common 
origin, a common pulse-beat, a common heart-throb and a 
common uplooking towards a gloriously progressive immor- 
tality. One God, one life-influx, one law, one brotherhood, 
and ultimately one destiny for all human intelligences. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 

Whatever disappointment may befall me 
In plans or pleasures in this world of doubt, 

I know that life at worst can but delay me, 

But no malicious fate has power to stay me 
Erom that grand journey on the Great Life route. 

June 11, and homeward bound, we are now steaming and 
struggling along in the Indian Ocean in a terrific monsoon. 
For nearly two days the rain poured down in torrents, light- 
nings flashed, thunders howled and the winds reached the 
rapidity of a furiously-rushing land cyclone. It was really a 
fearful clash of the elements for a time. The steamer " Aden " 
that I originally designed to take passage on, succumbed to 
the storm on the Arabian coast and went down with nearly 
her entire crew. 

Our stop at Aden, Arabia, was brief — but none too brief, 
considering that we could only see a unique village squat in 
the sand with barren hills and mountains rising up in the 
background. One poor forlorn-looking Arab approached our 
steamer in a rickety boat with ostrich plumes for sale. None 
purchased. It is scarcely safe to clasp too closely Ishmael's 
hand. The blood of Palmer, linguist and scientist, still cries 
from Araby's sands. 

June 14 ; the days are lengthening. We enter the nar- 
row passageway to the Red Sea. The heat, as usual here, is 
pitilessly oppressive. The passengers, mostly English, have 
their daily game of cricket. Some pitch quoits ; others smoke 



440 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

and play cards, two Roman Catholic priests joining them. 
The Southern Cross now hangs upon the horizon's verge afar 
down in the southwest skies — and the North star is rising 
higher and higher each night. 

A cricket player, from overheating the blood yesterday, 
died this morning of apoplexy. He, the shell, the tent that 
he dwelt in, will be buried in the sea to-morrow morning — 
the fifth sea-burial since leaving Ceylon. Another passenger, 
our ship doctor informs me, is dangerously ill with inflamma- 
tion of the stomach; "What are the causes ? doubtless, exces- 
sive eating : fruit, coffee and biscuits at 7 A. m. ; regular 
breakfast at 9 A. m. ; lunch at 1 P. M. ; dinner at 6 p. m. ; 
and supper at 9 o'clock in the evening. Besides these five 
meals, tea and cakes are served at 3 o'clock P. M. — and 
people have indigestion and inflammation of the stomach. 
Quite likely, and quite deservedly ! Few die from starva- 
tion, many from gormandizing. 

city or SUEZ. 

This is an old, dull, Egyptian town, constituted principally 
of a Custom House and a cluster of ordinary buildings. The 
real city is a little distance from here, and far from being 
imposing. The street people seemed poor, and many of them 
were suffering from sand-caused sore eyes. The Suez Canal 
is about ninety miles in length. It is not wide enough for 
two steamers to pass, or move along abreast. Financially, 
this canal has proved a marvellous success. What of the 
proposed Nicaragua Canal ? Will it be built — and with 
American capital? 

We are at Port Said to-day, the largest coaling station in 
the world. Here is where the steamers enter the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. 

Egypt has changed little since my previous visit. Her 
pedestals and pyramids defy the bony finger of Time. In 
Ceylon, as before mentioned, I met the exiled Arabi Pasha. 
He was charged with a military revolt, demanding from the 



MEDITERRANEAN SEA. EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 44t 

Khedive an immediate change of ministry and the increase of 
the army to eighteen thousand. The Khedive yielded. Arabi 
rapidly became popular, owing to his strong dislike to Euro- 
peans. He soon defied the authority of the Khedive, and 
became, practically, military dictator. English and French 
fleets were sent to put down the rebellion. Arabi's army 
was defeated at Tel-el-Kebis, and Cairo was occupied. Arabi 
Pasha was tried, convicted and banished to Ceylon, where, 
as a political exile, he continues to pine for his native land. 
His residence is upon the side of a mountain in the suburbs 
of Kanda. He receives a small yearly annuity. One encour- 
aging word from England would return this old patriot to 
his native country, that his bones might sleep with those of 
his kindred — but Briton is dumb. 

SLAVERY IN AFRICA. 

The Koran justifies slavery. And African Mohammedans, 
originally from Arabia, persist in buying, selling, hunting 
and holding the black men of Africa in slavery. Nations 
more enlightened than Arabs have encouraged slave-holding. 
It was as early as 1620 that Africans were purchased by 
selfish men to labor in America as slaves. Even " eminent 
Christian ministers (see Rev. Blyden's " Negro Race," page 
33) held negroes in bondage." William Penn, the Quaker, 
though very kind to the Indians, held, at one time in his life, 
slaves. Rev. George Whitfield and President Edwards, 
author of several standard works on Theology, were slave- 
holders. The British Government brought these slaves in 
her merchant ships to America. For a number of years 
Africans were shipped to North America as cattle and sold. 
Preachers not only held and worked slaves, but the Right 
Rev. William Meade, bishop of the diocese of Virginia, pub- 
lished a book in defence of slavery. Here's an extract (page 
35) : " Almighty God has been pleased to make you slaves, 
and give you nothing but labor and poverty in this world, 
which you are obliged to submit to, as it is his will that it 



442 AROUND THE WORLD. 

should be so. Your bodies, you know, are not your own. 
They are at the disposal of those you belong to," etc. Bishop 
Ives taught that slavery was right, saying that when " Ones- 
imus ran away from his master, Paul sent him back with a 
letter." So the " man of to-day ought to send runaway slaves 
back to their masters." These were the teachings of many 
bishops and priests as late as the year 1840. 

The Bishop of Abyssinia published a letter in the " London 
Times," just after the Queen's jubilee, defending the right 
and justice of slavery in Zanzibar, over which the English 
hold a sort of a protectorate. The above references to slavery 
remind me that when, in 1854, 1 was preaching universal sal- 
vation by grace, universal salvation anyhow, in Baltimore, Mr. 
Ironmonger, one of the deacons of my church, took a slave- 
girl, seven-tenths white, as security for a debt. The demand 
not being met, this nearly white slave-girl was put upon the 
slave-market block and sold to the highest bidder. My re- 
proofs to the deacon, together with the further facts that I 
had become a Spiritualist, that I circulated Fremont anti- 
slavery tracts in the congregation, and recommended Horace 
Greely's " New York Tribune," raised such a political and 
religious cyclone that I was quite in danger of my life. The 
party of " plug-uglys " was active in those days, especially 
by night. Soon I resigned, yet preached two months after 
my resignation. The society, upon my leaving, voted resolu- 
tions of love and confidence, and pronounced me both a " de- 
voted pastor" and a " Christian gentleman." The resolu- 
tions I still retain. From this time, freed from creeds and 
all churchianic conventionalities, my real success in life 
began. 

THE GRANDEUR OF ANTIQUITY. 

Journeying in the East and studying the civilizations of 
explored, unearthed antiquity, the inquiry still is, which 
country was first in what we denominate a great civilization, 
Babylon, China, India, or Egypt ? Authorities still differ. 



MEDITERRANEAN SEA. — EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 443 

The erection of the great pyramids, which so many writers regard as 
an indication of the highly civilized state of Egypt at the time of their erec- 
tion, is, in fact, a striking proof that before this period the nation had made 
very considerable progress in the arts and sciences. The people who built 
the pyramids had already long since fallen from their highest civilization. 
The origin of our sciences and many moral precepts still taught by the wisdom 
of nations is found recorded on the papyri and on the bas-reliefs of the 
monuments of upper Egypt ; while many a dogma on which existing reli- 
gions are based may be traced to its original form in the documents dis- 
covered in the tombs of Thebes and Abydos. 

The Egyptians were a race of builders, as the pyramids testify, and 
they built with a resolve for permanence which has never since been ap- 
proached. Upon the walls of their edifices they inscribed their annals. 
Here, in characters as sharp in outline and as vivid in color as on the day 
they were engraved and painted, we find the record of their creed, their 
exploits, their manners and customs. But the key to the ancient writings 
had been lost, and until within the last 100 years the records were inscru- 
table. With the discovery of the Kosetta stone in 1799 the secrets of the 
Egyptian writers were unlocked to us. Rosetta is forty-four miles north- 
east of Alexandria, with which it is connected by a railway. 

We are now able to read what the ancient Egyptians wrote, but we 
cannot say we wholly comprehend it. The genius of this wonderful people 
was wholly foreign to our own. Kings were garbed as deities and demi- 
gods ; history was sheathed in myth and allegory, and involved in symbol 
and metaphor. The fundamental maxim of Egyptian philosophy seems to 
have been this : " Mortal existence is brief ; beyond death lies the only 
true life ; man's duty is to make ready for it." The earliest inscriptions 
are perhaps 7,000 years old, in the era of the second Egyptian dynasty. 
From the third dynasty, about 3700 B. C, direct writings abound. 

The translation of the heiroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions of Egypt 
and Mesopotamia has already thrown a broad light upon the half-told 
stories of the early peopling of the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, and 
as additional historic relics are being constantly brought to view, and there 
seems to be no limit to the deciphering capacity of minds schooled in the 
subtleties of translation, still stranger developments in the future may be 
confidently expected. These discoveries have not only exposed the errors 
of written history in referring to events, conditions and individual charac- 
ter, but they have brought into prominence great political powers and 
dynasties, feared and respected before Nineveh or Babylon appeared and 
Inown heretofore only as unimportant dependencies. 

The earliest and greatest of these nations unrecognized by history were 
the people of Akkad. They were of the Turanean stock, and their origi- 
nal home was in the uplands of Armenia, and northward where, some 



444 AROUND THE WORLD. . 

6,000 years or more before the Christian era, they attained a high civiliza- 
tion. They invented the cuneiform letters used in Babylonia and Assyria,, 
and were far advanced in the arts \rhen they spread over Chaldea and the 
Mesopotamian basin. There, mingling with the Semite races, they created 
the great empire of Babylonia, and in time lost their distinctive charac- 
ter by imparting it to the Assyrio Semitic races with whom they were 
thrown in contact. 

It has also been discovered that the Hittites were for centuries a warlike 
and conquering race, rulers over a large empire embracing many different 
peoples, and not only vastly superior to the Hebrews in martial powers, 
but capable of successfully coping with the military strength of Egypt 
or Babylonia. The Old Testament speaks of the Hittites. It is supposed 
that the Israelites, semi-barbarous, knew of but a small colony of the race 
occupying lands south of Palestine. At the height of their power the 
empire of the Hittites extended over Northern Syria and the whole of 
Asia Minor, with a fortified capital on the Euphrates. To the north it 
stretched to the Black Sea, and its southern capital was on the Arontes,. 
the principal river of Syria. The Hittites were also of Turanean or 
Tartar stock, and were finally subjugated by the Assyrians 717 B. C. 

Concerning the erroneous manner in which history has dealt with the 
characters of many of the prominent actors in the past, we will give but a 
single example — that of Sardanapalus. It is now shown upon the tablet* 
that he was far from being the weak and sensual sovereign described by the 
poets. It is in clearest proof, on the contrary, that he was the most power- 
ful and enlightened monarch of his time, distinguished alike for energy ^ 
sagacity and appreciation of art and literature. He founded a library 
and school of learning "for the instruction of the people of Nineveh," as- 
expressed by the tablets. " The discovery of this storehouse of national 
records," says the author, " almost compensates the literary world for the 
loss of the Alexandrian Library." As he was the grandson of Sennacherib, 
"the Assyrian" who, as told by Byron, "came down like a wolf on the 
fold," and the flower of whose army was destroyed by the Lord, we will 
mention, in conclusion, that the cuneiform records make no reference to 
that event, although they tell the story of the return of Sennacherib to 
Assyria with " 200,000 captive Hebrews and other Syrians " in his train." 1 

MALTA. 
On the Mediterranean several days we reach Malta, a city 

1 Those who wish to pursue exhaustive studies of the recent explorations at 
Nippur and through the regions of ancient Babylon should procure the two 
large volumes of J. P. Peters, Ph.D., Sc.D., D.D., just from the press of 
Putman & Sons, price $5.00. They contain a mint of information. 



MEDITERRANEAN SEA. — EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 445 

standing upon a limestone rock, built largely of rocks and 
into rocks. The dust is intolerable, the few trees and shrub- 
beiy live by irrigation. Goats have the right of way, as do 
dogs in Constantinople. The guides that I had to do with in 
this little City by the Sea were either robbers, liars, or beg- 
gars ; and yet, they were eminently religious, belonging to the 
Roman Catholic Church. The priests here stalk through the 
streets in their long black robes, the head-gearing being a 
queer three-cornered cocked hat. Their conspicuous presence 
is repulsive. Conducted to the Governor's palace I found 
him a most courteous gentleman, taking pleasure in showing 
me the beautiful paintings of the Grand Masters of the Knights 
of Malta — being a Knight myself they interested me most 
intensely. In ancient times, this island was occupied by the 
Phoenicians, and now by the English. It has had, upon the 
whole, a most remarkable history, being held at different times, 
by Phoenicians, Cathagenians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs. The 
footprints of each may be traced to-day in varied ruins. The 
Romans, while here, constructed and dedicated a magnificent 
Temple to Apollo, some of the scattered pillars still remain- 
ing. It is recorded that St. Paul was shipwrecked here, A. D. 
58. The bay bears his name. The Maltese language is com- 
posed largely of the Arabic. 

Old residents here informed me that the climate was uni- 
form and delightful, being quite a health-resort in winter- 
time. The soil back from the seashore is sufficiently fertile 
to produce two crops a year. The summer sets in about the 
first of June, and the hottest days are tempered by the north 
and northwesterly winds. Rains in winter time are frequent. 

While the ghastly chapel of bones repelled me, and the 
Capuchins' Convent, where several skeletons of deceased 
monks are placed in niches, dressed in the ecclesiastical robes 
they wore during their church-life, disgusted me, I richly en- 
joyed the catacombs — these underground excavations con- 
sisting of long, dreary passages, out of the walls of which 
were cut sepulchral niches for men, women and children. 



446 AROUND THE WORLD. 

Some of the bones seem almost perfect, but they crumble to 
dust at the first touch. Abela, Ciantar, Gart-Said, and other 
historians inform us that these catacombs were dug into the 
rocks by the early Christians to avoid the fierce persecutions 
of the pagans. Recent discoveries of picture paintings, 
sculpture and inscriptions, confirm this opinion. 

MUSING ON THE MEDITERRANEAN. 

Sea captains and sailors are neither misers nor bigots. The 
seas lengthen the golden chains of friendship, enlarge human 
nature and widen the horizon of faith and fraternal sympathy. 

Yesterday, June 18th, we halted in our voyage at Brindisi, 
under Government regulations. All passengers from India 
were obliged to go through the farce of a medical examina- 
tion. No symptoms of the bubonic plague were seen or 
scented. 

At sea again ! The Mediterranean waters are smooth as 
polished glass — too placid for a rippling wave or silvery 
crest. In the hazy distance Mount Etna lifts its volcanic 
head. Looking down upon it are Sicily's burning skies. 
Scientists are not united yet as to cause of volcanoes. Opin- 
ions and theories concerning these internal fires are not dem- 
onstrations. 

June 20th — another burial at sea to-day — a woman long 
crushed with a brutal, drunken husband. They were Welsh, 
with a family of three small children. He had been seen to 
beat this poor consumptive woman aboard the steamer. Her 
sickness had excited the deepest sympathy of the passengers 
— and the husband's long years of abuse, when intoxicated, 
had broken her spirit, wrecked her happiness and hurried her 
to a grave down among the green seaweeds of the ocean. 
These people made a mistake in their marriage. And now, 
why should legal enactments have compelled these parties to 
continue this mistake till " death did them part"? — compel 
them to continue the mistake, increasing the population of 
the world the meantime, with poor, illy-begotten and pitiable 



MEDITERRANEAN SEA. — EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 447 

possibilities of humanity, to later fill jails, poorhouses, or 
penitentiaries ? 

Love is not lust. A forced "love," a forced continu- 
ance in a loveless marriage, a forced increase of children, 
and forced injuries in married life, mental or physical, may 
be legal and respectable ; but they are, nevertheless, de- 
grading and damning to posterity. Does not the power, in 
intelligent persons, to make a contract, imply the moral right 
to unmake it? Are human contracts infallible and eternal? 
If the parties themselves cannot amicably adjust their matri- 
monial differences, let parents and friends be called, consti- 
tuting a friendly court of family advisers ; if this does not 
succeed, let the matter be referred to a board of arbitration, 
the parties mutually selecting the arbitrators — if this fails 
appeal to the court of equity. Do anything, almost, rather 
than live in a marriage-hell of suspicion, of jealousy, of inhar- 
mony, of incompatibility, of drunkenness, peopling the world 
with mental dwarfs and blood-thirsty criminals. Love is of 
God — and that only is love which is clean, pure, unselfish — 
and that only is law which is based upon the immutable princi- 
ples of right and justice, and which conduces to the highest 
good and happiness of its subjects. 

THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE. 

June 22, 1897. Off from the coast of Portugal, once a 
country famous for discovery, and rich in gold ; but now poor. 
And Spain, also, once proud and immensely rich from Inca 
and Aztec robberies, but now comparatively poor and seldom 
noticed in the international affairs of Europe. The law of 
eternal justice exercises sooner or later judgment in the earth. 

Our passengers celebrated the Queen's Jubilee by a great 
dinner and a shipboard dance in the evening. The Captain's 
response to the principal toast was painfully incoherent ; its 
chief virtue being its brevity. He ought to read Emerson, 
Holmes and Longfellow, and then sit a student at the feet of 
Gladstone, before further attempting public speaking. The 



448 AROUND THE WORLD. 

toast was drank to a ringing " God Save the Queen." The 
speeches all were sufficiently British and self-congratulatory 
to arouse German ire and Italian anger. These nationalities 
aboard not only showed their displeasure in several ways, but 
openly expressed delight — that while England had largely 
lost her former prestige, Russia now wielded the dominating 
sceptre of influence over the Continent and all through the 
great East. Greece and Turkey were discussed with consid- 
erable acrimony, in connection with the slaughter of a hun- 
dred thousand Armenians by the great assassin of the nine- 
teenth century, the Sultan of Turkey. 

Considering that I was the only American passenger, I was 
asked, half in jest, I at first thought, to respond to a toast in- 
volving international commerce. I did so, deprecating war 
and recommending universal arbitration. I further assured 
my fellow-passengers of America's good-will towards England 
and her colonies, and that I took very great pleasure in the 
jubilee celebration, not from any special admiration of the 
Queens and Kings constituting the unhappy reigning families 
of Europe — the Czar traveling in an iron-clad car from fear 
of assassination — but from the higher, diviner consideration, 
that humanity is one. Some of these crowns were already 
worm-eaten and tottering. The trend of the world's thought 
was towards governments by the people and for the people — 
governments in which brains rather than blood should rule. 

Queen Victoria as a woman, as a mother, as a royal-souled 
grandmother, as a discreet and honored widow, as the reign- 
ing Empress not only of India and millions of English-speak- 
ing people, but of portions of Africa and other countries, and 
whose sceptre is the symbol of civilization — calls forth my 
profoundest admiration. Oh, that there were more enthroned 
women in the world ! 

As a physician and hygienist, I further honor the Queen 
for ordering each autumn American apples and graham grits ; 
for having kept a clean court ; for having, from her own 
bosom, nursed her babes ; for never having painted nor pow- 



MEDITERRANEAN SEA. — EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 449 

dered her face ; for never having worn corsets nor peaked- 
toed shoes ; nor followed the Paris fashions of French demi- 
mondes, as do many giddy, light-headed women of both 
England and America. Hail, all hail, then, to Queen 
Victoria ! 

A London writer says : — 

" Imagine what it must be for this old lady, this venerable grandmother 
drawn slowly along in her little wicker carriage by a mild, docile donkey, to 
be able to say ' My son, will, one day, doubtless reign over the United 
Kingdom ; my grandson is the German Emperor and King of Prussia ; one 
of my granddaughters is Empress of all the Russias ; I have a son who 
reigns over the modest Duchy of Saxe-Coburg Gotha ; one of my daughters 
was Empress of Germany ; one of my grandsons is Grand Duke of Hesse ; 
I have granddaughters who will reign over Roumania and Greece ; the 
King of Belgium and the King of Portugal are my cousins ; the whole of 
Germany is filled with my descendants and their connections and, leaving 
out of consideration some few Catholic dynasties, there exists not one 
Royal house on the earth that does not look towards me as the venerable 
grandmother, the source of that perennial stream of Majesties and High- 
nesses.' 

" In truth, this simple enumeration has in it something dazzling and the 
pages of the ' Almanach de Gotha' have a brilliancy that is almost blind- 
ing when one views, stepping out of them, this long procession of the 
powerful of the earth all coming on this jubilee occasion to bow the knee be- 
fore the daughter of the House of Hanover and render her homage as the 
typical Sovereign of this century." 

IN LONDON. 

Gladly leaving the steamer this day, July 26th, I press the 
soil and the streets of London for the seventh time. London 
is the city of cities, the Mecca to which all civilization and 
culture naturally flock ; and, by common consent, it is the 
best governed city in the world. Beginning with the British 
Museum, I confess to a profound admiration of it and its 
people ; never forgetting, however, my Scotch ancestry. 

Millions from the Continent and the far-away Orient, having 
witnessed the Jubilee exercises, are now on their winding 
ways homeward bound. If some are financially the worse for 



450 AROUND THE WORLD. 

their journeyings and for partaking of the festivities with 
unavoidable discomforts, they are the wiser also. Experience 
is often a very expensive school. Moral justice, merciless in 
penalties to physical law, will not loosen its grip till the 
uttermost farthing is paid. 

" What wilt thou have," said Emerson ; " pay for it and 
take it." Do not complain; do not worry; what is legiti- 
mately your own you will ultimately get. What is not your 
own by the divine law of right, if you get, you will lose, and 
the loss can never be quite regained. The vicarious atone- 
ment is, at best, but a clumsy misfit to partially rectify an 
archaic blunder — a bit of buttonhole theology to shield vil- 
lains from justice and comfort the lazy — afoul blot upon 
the back chapter of Christendom. Jesus did not die for 
Socrates or Plato; did not die and "pay it all"; all the 
debts for anybody. No, no — each and all must pay their 
own debts, cultivate their own corn-fields, chew their own 
bread and butter, earn their own heaven ! I would sooner 
have Jesus masticate my food for me than to have him atone 
for, and pay by his blood, my passage to heaven. How mean 
any decent saint would feel to enter the New Jerusalem upon 
the merits of some one else ! " Work out your own salva- 
tion," was a command of Paul — and a very commendable 
command. 

THE TYRANNY OF FASHION. 

Fashion is comparatively headless and heartless. It is also 
a merciless tyrant. To follow its freaks is to die the death, 
not of the true and the noble, but the early death of the 
unwisely wicked. Oriental people do not become bald- 
headed. Among other reasons is this, they do not wear the 
hard, stiff hat. 

Remembering well my first visit to London, over thirty 
years ago, and a dinner given me by Benjamin Coleman, a 
very estimable man and pioneer Spiritualist, I recall as among 
the guests present William Howitt, the noted author, and 
other distinguished gentlemen. Our theme of conversation 



MEDITERRANEAN SEA. — EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 451 

was Spiritualism and its progress in all enlightened countries. 
When about leaving, Mr. Coleman, handing me my easy- 
going, soft hat, said, in a kindly undertone, " You will have 
to change this to a regulation hat ; all gentlemen with us 
wear the tall, silk hat." It crimsoned my face for a moment, 
but, rallying, I replied, " Hats are made for the protection and 
comfort of heads. They do not grow, but heads do." Inde- 
pendent, and possibly perverse by nature, I clung to my com- 
fortable felt. In the meantime, English heads have grown. 
The following extracts are from the " London Times," July 
issue : — 

Lord Ronald Gower, in a second letter to The Times on this subject, 
says that he does not for a moment hope for a sudden cessation of the tall 
hat ; but if men of sense and good taste would only have the courage to 
cease to appear in London in the tall hat and in its place wear some simple, 
soft and sensible hat, then we might hope to see the bright day when the 
tall hat would only be worn by mutes and bagmen, scarecrows, and fossil- 
ized old fogies. 

" Thomas Bowler " writes from Brighton, saying the high chimney-pot 
hat, he is thankful to say, is almost a thing of the past in that enlightened 
borough, although it is still adhered to by a few Sunday cockneys and ultra- 
Sabbatarians. It has been almost displaced by the round or the short soft 
hat, which, if not more graceful, is far more comfortable. 

" A Man about Town " says that " Gracchus " may take heart of grace, 
for since last jubilee the young of all classes have abjured the tall top hat. 
In our most frequented thoroughfares on any Sunday night not one per 
cent, of the crowds of middle-class men will be found wearing a silk hat. 
The "Johnnies," too, of the Upper Ten and the lords are also rapidly 
emancipating themselves, for in the Park or Piccadilly they now usually 
disport themselves in soft, or straw hats. Those who declare that only a 
tall hat can be worn above a frock coat seem quite oblivious of the regula- 
tion dress for a naval officer — viz., frock-coat and cap. Fancy the cap- 
tain of an ironclad appearing on duty in a chimney-pot, stove-pipe hat. 

"Equal rights, equal duties, special privileges to none, 
Are the only grand attainments that ever can be won." 

LONDON. 

There is not, there could not be, but one London. It is a 
world in and of itself ; a living sample of an inextinguishable 



452 AROUND THE WORLD. 

identity; a compact unity in diversity. Its population, 
though decidedly English, is, to a certain extent, a conglom- 
eration of all races, tribes and tongues. One may drive 
twenty miles in a straight course across any of London's 
diameters. And never have I seen more obliging shop- 
keepers, more polite policemen, or real genuine gentlemen 
than in this great mammoth city. The English, while more 
cautious and conservative, are also more fixed and substantial 
than Americans. This is everywhere manifest in the solidity 
of their institutions and in their massive architecture. Every 
bridge, every archway seems to have been built for eternity. 
A Briton's house is his castle, once invited into it, and ever 
afterwards you have a substantial friend. 

Arriving in London on a Saturday, I repaired quickly to 
the Florence House, kept by Mr. J. J. and Miss Florence 
Morse, where I found every possible comfort as well as hand- 
clasps warm with friendship. Mr. J. J. Morse is one of the 
most energetic workers as well as strong pillars in the temple 
of English Spiritualism. Sunday evening, expecting to be un- 
recognized, I quietly slipped into the Cavendish Hall, where 
I had lectured some thirty years ago, to listen to Mrs. E. W. 
Wallis, announced to answer questions under spirit control. 
Her work was done admirably and satisfactorily. She was 
frequently cheered. My old friend, Thomas Everitt, occu- 
pied the chair. Mrs. Everitt's mediumship is still afire with 
demonstrations of immortality. This same evening I met 
Mr. and Mrs. Watson of Jamestown, N. Y., Mr. and Mrs. 
Hill and Mrs. Cadwalleder of Philadelphia, Pa., and other 
Americans. What a contrast in appearance, this audience, 
with those I had so recently addressed in Ceylon and India ! 

The week following my arrival in the city, Mr. and Mrs. 
J. J. Morse, opening their commodious parlors, decorated and 
festooned for the occasion, gave me a splendid reception. 
The rooms were packed and among them many of my old 
friends, such as the Everitts, the Tebbses and many others. 
Mr. Morse presided. Miss Florence Morse and other musi- 



MEDITERRANEAN SEA. — EGYPT AND ANTIQUITY. 453 

cians gave us excellent music. Addresses were made by the 
Rev. John Page Hopps, Mrs. "Watson, Mrs. Cadwalleder, Mr. 
Everitt and several others. A choice collation was served of 
coffee, cake, ice-cream and fruits. It was a most enjoj^able 
season. Lecturing a Sunday evening in the Cavendish Hall 
by invitation of E. Dawson Rogers, the very able editor of 
" London Light," I met J. Enmore Jones and others of my 
old and highly-esteemed friends. All pure friendships are 
eternal. Mrs. Watson supplied the Cavendish Society a Sun- 
day evening later. She is a very clear and attractive speaker 
and, what is more, a most admirable woman. 

Invited to Glasgow and other places to lecture, I greatly 
desired to go, but home associations were calling, urging me 
back to my native land. Life is only another word for activ- 
ity. For myself there seems to be no rest this side the crystal 
river of death. 

I paced, with restless feet, the shores of time, 
With fever'd brow and aching heart. And when 
I gazed across the vast expanse outspread 
And pondered o'er what it might mean, a voice 
Came from the bosom of th' eternal deep, 
And, answering my silent pray'r, it said 
"Thus art thou, mortal — moving on and on 
From Infinite to endless Infinite, 
In constant, ever-fluctuating, flow." 

Frequently asked, Is there any advantage in traveling under 
the auspices of Thomas Cook and Son ? I have to say decid- 
edly — there is ! The traveler gets better service and cheaper 
hotel rates, and then, Cook and Son's agents in all the civil- 
ized countries of the world are polite and courteously atten- 
tive. They meet you at the Custom Houses of the various 
ports and assist in the examination of your luggage. They 
see to your getting the proper interpreters and give you gra- 
tuitously all needed advice concerning side routes and seasons 
of the year best adapted to different climates of the East. 
Heartily do I wish that I could speak as flatteringly of the 
P. & O. line of steamers, but I cannot. Often, though you 



454 ABOUND THE WORLD. 

have first-class tickets, you get only second-class attention. 
They thrust three or four into a cabin and allow them to half 
suffocate if the weather is a little stormy. The stewards are 
often unaccommodating and the bell-boys often take their 
own time to respond, and yet they expect regular "tips." 
They employ cheap Hindoo deck labor, because these poor 
coolies will work for a song. Take passage by the Orient, 
a competing line, or by almost any French or German steamer, 
and you will get better table fare and far more attention from 
servants. 

Human life is a pilgrimage, a pacing-ground for experi- 
ences. Along the way are smiles and tears, sunshine and 
shadow — life and death. 

"I think of death as some delightful journey 
That I shall take when all my tasks are done. 
Though life has given me a heaping measure 
Of all best gifts and many a cup of pleasure, 
Still better things await me farther on. 

" This little earth is such a narrow planet, 

The distances beyond it so supreme, 
I have no doubt that all the mighty spaces 
Between us and the stars are filled with faces 

More beautiful than any artist's dream. 

" I know that I shall surely behold them, 

When from this waiting-room my soul has soared — 
Earth is a wayside station, where we wander, 
Until from out the silent darkness yonder, 
Death swings his lantern, and cries ' All aboard !' 

" I think death's train sweeps through the solar system 

And passes suns and moons that dwarf our own, 
And close beside us we shall find our dearest, 
The spirit friends on earth we held the nearest, 
And in the shining distance Love's white throne." 



Works of J. M. Peebles. 



Immortality, 

And our employments hereafter, with what a hundred spirits, good and 
evil, say of their dwelling-places. Cloth $1.00; paper 5octs.; postage I5cts. 

Seers of the Ages. 

Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Spiritualism. This volume, nearly 500 
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Magic. 

One of the series of lectures delivered by Dr. Peebles before the medical 
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Critical Review 

Of Rev. Dr. P. E. Kipp's Sunday night Sermons against Spiritualism. 
Price 15 cts. 

Hell. 

A critical review of Rev. Dr. P. E. Kipp's sermon upon " What and Where 
is Hell?" Price 10 cts. 

How to Live a Century, 

And grow old gracefully. 109 pages. Price 52 cents. 

The First General Epistle 

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Spiritual Harp. 

A collection of vocal music for the choir, congregation and social circles. 
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Spiritualism Defined and Defended. 

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The Soul* 

And its Pre-existent State. Is Re-incarnation True ? Price 10 cts. 

Ingersollism or Christianity, Which? 

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How Not to Die; Immortality on Earth. 

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The Pro and Con of Spiritualism. 

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